I was in the Army stationed at WSMR in the mid eighties, as a weather observer. One of our remote met stations was close by the Trinity site. We had to drive out to Trinity every 3 weeks or so to check on the equipment, change ink and paper, and just do a little maintenance on the enclosure box. We had several met stations throughout the range - this one was the northernmost. Made for a long day's drive. The Trinity site at that time was open - no fence enclosure...we could drive right up to the monument. After the first 4 or 5 visits, it lost it's appeal, and was just another dreaded task. We never gave the radiation a second thought.
@@taylordooley3765 It sounds as though Davis soon found it uninteresting. There's only limited appeal to a big, shallow, radioactive depression in the ground.
I've always been a massive WWII buff, so when I went to Japan years ago, I went to the detonation site in Nagasaki. The bomb detonated over a prison, and the only thing left was a narrow-width bit of dug in concrete that would of formed a perimeter around the prison's foundation. When I stood there, and really thought about it, it was one of those rare occasion where you can feel the weight of a historical event; that only happened twice.
They modified the house since I was there 20 years ago you could see the roof that almost blew off because of the blast and it looks like they repainted as well one thing that use to be there if it’s not any more was the swimming pool that they had to keep them self cool
My grandpa was an observer of the first bomb tests, he took pictures. But normally after so many years most are dead of old age or radiation causes. My grandpa is still alive today and finally got his "Atomic Veteran" plaque and coin after 76 years.
As regards "Jumbo". As the video stated, they intended on having the test explode inside it in order to capture the plutonium in case the bomb didn't work. But they decided to not use it because someone asked a very important question. "If the bomb works, will jumbo be completely destroyed, or would we instead have constructed the world's largest fragmentation grenade?" They decided that using Jumbo wasn't worth the risk.
One bomb malfunctioned in the south pacific and spread plutonium everywhere. They sent a bunch of dopes out to pick up the pieces by hand and put them in a hole. They covered the hole with concrete. The site is now going under water due to sea level rise. DOD has known about it for decades but has'nt spent the money to clean it up. The guys who were exposed are some of the many who can't get the government to pay their health costs. The plutonium will spread into the ocean.
That sure is a concerning fact. I wonder who would've been assigned cleanup duty for the fragments embedded with plutonium sent miles all over the desert? That's a short straw you'd really want to avoid....
Being that nuclear bombs are thermonuclear, I wonder if they evacuated the air out to a complete vacuum and detonated the bomb, no air to expand, just a thought
@@nigelman9506 You'd still have all the radiation pressure, not to mention even at the small scale of the Trinity the immediate vaporization radius is still much bigger than the Jumbo
About ten years ago (2011-12) an old man, estimated to be in his eighties came all alone into our hangar in Fort Worth, Texas. He was a WWII B-29 aircraft crew chief. I engaged him in conversation about his service. He told me that on July 16, 1945 he was preflighting his aircraft at what I recall he said was Walker Army Air Base. He said it was still somewhat dark requiring the use of a flashlight. Suddenly to the North the sky lit up bright as daylight. I recall he said there was rising terrain between him and the light, so he could see the outline of the mountans. Shortly thereafter It dimmed. He went about his work. He said it wasn't until after the war ended that he realized he unknowingly witnessed the Trinity test. I regret I did not get his name or record our conversation.
It may have been Alamogordo Air Field (now Holloman AFB). There is record on their website that B-29's flew from there, and the Trinity site is 60 miles north-northwest, on the other side of the mountains, which aligns with the old man's account.
In the 70s I was stationed at Holloman AFB and I was on a disaster preparedness team. Sometimes we would train for a Broken Arrow-and the supervisors would hide some mildly radioactive material in the desert for us to find with our Giger counters. One piece of the material was a melted down small piece of the tower. It was still somewhat hot and the counter would go crazy when someone found it - was kept in lead box.
Sphinx is alien nuclear detector after earth human made nuclear wipe out. Pyramid is the emergency hospital for alien reborns (human body with alien soul) who died during the earth human made nuclear wipe out. Please no nuclear. UK🇬🇧 HM King George VI, the father of HM Queen Elizabeth, also died of nuclear dust attached to his lower rib. Nuclear dust from 1945 August, two atom bomb dust blew from Japan🇯🇵 to China, killed more Chinese than Japanese, then blew to Spain🇪🇸 and the UK🇬🇧. Please don't use nuclear in space. The Gods who maintain this Universe (aliens) are removing nuclear material from this planet Earth and hanging them on the outside of the metal wall of this Universe. In 2019, 24 of the European Space Agency's Galileo satellites lost contact because these satellites provide services for nuclear power plants, nuclear facilities, nuclear military, and aliens shut down these satellites. Global oil and gas prices and electricity prices jack up because nuclear power plants worldwide are nearly all broken and unable to generate electricity. The nuclear matter is a true time-reversal machine and energy vampire. Because of the nuclear material, this Earth is so trash. Nuclear works by drawing energy from any being (human, animal, insect, soil, soul) attached to nuclear dust. The Gods who maintain this Universe (aliens) made oil, gas, coal and minerals. Please use these energies. Gods recycle the landfills, trash, plastics, waste, sewage, and the dead body of water creatures under the crust to make oil, gas, and minerals. Gods use flying saucers to compress dead trees and plants under the soil to make coals. So Gods can bring better asteroid soil and better seeds to Earth to upgrade Earth. Most asteroids are worth hundreds of millions or billions or trillions. God bless I do oil, gas, coal and Solar resonator. Global warming is because the Sun was destroyed by human nuclear explosions since 1945. Gods (aliens who created and maintain this Universe) have been repairing the Sun since 2002-07-13. Gods are pulling Earth away from Sun since 2018-06-03. Since 2019-03-23, Gods have been taking nuclear particles away from Earth to stop nuclear wipeout and nuclear disasters. guestbook.lingpai.org/d/30-move-the-himalayas-to-the-pacific-ocean-to-build-et-base-island
I had a small piece of trinitite from the blast collected by a relative who worked on the initiater portion of the project. He collected it as soon after the explosion as they were allowed near the site. It is encased in a piece of plexiglass. It gets passed around the family and currently is with a nephew for safekeeping.
Proof? Sounds like bullshit, it’s illegal to take anything off the grounds. You can’t even visit white sands national park without agreeing to not take any rocks.💀
I used to fly out of Holloman AFB Alamagordo. The site was very easy to see from the air. The pattern it left on the ground is invisible at ground level, but from the air it looks like a meteor hit without any crater... there are rays of what look like ejecta, and an obvious round central area. I never visited the site personally. Quite a bit of history there. Edit: 08:55 is the image, I posted my comment before seeing that. It wasn't as distinct in the 1980's as that photo, but still very discernible.
I went to trinity site in early 2000’s after begging my dad to take me, I was in high school at the time but was obsessed with learning about nukes and their history. This vid was nice, it took me back! I am pretty sure the spot to look down onto the old crater floor was still open/visible at that time.
Enjoyed it, thx! Visited the site with my kids in the early 90's. Met a women who actually saw the light in the sky when the bomb was detonated. She was a little girl, and her Mom and Dad were cooks on a work train. They had kicked her outside to play so they could prepare breakfast, and she saw the sky light up in an intense purple-violet flash. The newspapers reported an ammo storage site had accidentally blown up.
Another ironic thing is my father in law enlisted in the Navy during WW2 Due to 2 of his brothers we're POWs and Part of the ANG 200 Coast artillery unit from Gallup. The brothers and my father in law all came home because of gadget being dropped on Japan !!!
What never ceases to amaze me is how quickly atomic weaponry went from first successful detonation (July 16) to actual combat use in the Pacific Theater less than a month later (Hiroshima Aug 6, Nagasaki Aug 9). I've walked ground on which atomic bombs were detonated twice in my life - Eniwetok Atoll 1976 (my ship - USS St Louis LKA-116 - brought in preliminary cargo for commencement of planning for & construction of the Runit Dome) & Nagasaki 2023.
I remember reading a comment with a conspiracy theory saying that the US never actually developed the bombs but took them from the nazis when they defeated Germany and dropped them on the Japanese. Funny story.
All three weapons were taken from a secret and separate Nazi who had 4 devices on a remote Greek island. The indigenous who helped said all 4 were different. Then one day they were kept inside as one was tested. Days later the Nazi scientists and the other 3 were gone. All that was left was a massive scar that still exists, and some really messed up observation bunkers. When the ground was tested it showed a Nuke was detonated. This all came from an episode of NASAs unsolved mysteries. They give out Earthly formations for study and didn’t know what they had when they detected the scar. It’s since been removed from the series library. So 3 left = Trinity and the two used for combat. All different and using different Radioactive means. Google Nazi Nuke test Rugen Island.
As someone who was exposed to radiation in the military, told it was a “safe dose” and now has leukemia, in excess of caution I would not visit any site with residual radiation. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Its not a gift that keeps on giving. Our bodies are designed to heal from radiation damage. What our bodies are not use to dealing with is chemical exposure.
@@RadioactiveDrewthis is the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. As a Nm resident, it’s almost uncommon for people ages 50 or older to not have some form of cancer. I’ve Seen so many relatives who were around when the bomb dropped die of various different lung cancers and brain tumors. And for the women down here it’s TOO common for the to have breast cancer. Exposure to the shit is not safe.
Nice site. When we visited the trinitite viewing enclosure was still open. When driving out of the parking area and on the access road, I looked in the rear view mirror and realized that most of the displays and the monument were in a shallow depression that was cause by the bomb. No way would I call it a crater but I guessed it looked to be about 3 or 4 feet deep at the center of the bowl. It was so shallow we never realized it when we were in it.
@@christianbuczko1481 The original crate was 8 feet deep and 1/2 mile in diameter. The bomb was not exploded "high above it." The bomb was on a 100-foot tower. The site was bulldozed to remove the trinitite because it was radioactive and some fill was brought in. The remainder of the original depression has been filled with wind-blown sand and dust.
I'm guessing a lot of people found your video now since Oppenheimer released, highly recommend watching the film by the way. I'm glad you could share more information about the trinity site nice video.
Yeah there has been a huge uptick in traffic on my Trinity Site video. I also made a second video mapping out the radiation of that site. RU-vid haven’t started pushing that yet.
On my bucket list. I've read that the tower wasn't actually vaporized - at least not entirely - but that it was blown into fragments that have been subsequently found all around G-0. Unimaginable force. When I was a kid, my parents took a trip out west and one of the stops was the Petrified Forest. When you go in you are admonished to NOT TAKE any bits you find on the ground. My father grabbed a hunk as big as a football and stashed it in the back seat with me. At the gate they asked if we had taken any bits of petrified wood....my father being unable to lie, fessed up and I handed the football over the seat and Pop gave it to the ranger. I thought his head was going to explode. We got away without further incident...
If you visit the towns nearby you will see bigger and tons of petrified tees in people’s yards, around businesses. You could buy a a huge log if you want!
One of my friends was stationed there and grabbed a chunk of trinitite. He kept it under his bed for years. His wife couldn’t get pregnant and he developed cancer. I don’t know if it was related. But lots of rock shops still sell the stuff.
It wasn’t related. I have a stash of it that was liberated by a federal employee from the site. Being an enthusiast I have several means of detecting and classifying radiation sources. Trinitite is not vigorously radioactive. A single piece isn’t detectable more than a few inches away by the most sensitive devices. A few hundred pounds stored close to your body and and in a manner that makes dust that is readily inhaled, well that’s another story.
I've stood at the ground zero bomb site in Hiroshima. A very daunting emotion. The screaming and moaning of "water, water" you could almost here 130,000 souls. Ground zero lies behind the the ruined dome building about 100m away. Every now and then you see scorch marks, burnt fire hydrants etc in the city.
In the late 1960s, while in the U.S. Navy, I visited the Nagasaki G0 site. By that time, the city had declared the area surrounding the G0 a permanent memorial area named Peace Park. A huge statue of a Shinto holy man (I guess) sitting cross-legged at the exact target coordinates with one hand raised, a finger pointed toward the heavens. Quite an impressive and sobering experience for this 24 year old sailor.
@@dragonmeddler2152 My dad was in the Royal Airforce and was involved with the British A bomb and H bomb tests at Maralinga South Australian outback and Montebello islands in the Indian Ocean and Christmas island in the Pacific Ocean . The radiation he got destroyed his cardio vascular system. The most dangerous test was performed at Christmas island of a hydrogen bomb, they were only around 15 kilometres away from the blast. Apparently the heat was so intense that the service men complained that it was like a electric bar heater being pressed against their skin for a few seconds
This video brings a refreshingly different perspective to the topic of nuclear energy, which is often neglected in the public discussion. As a German who witnessed the decommissioning of all nuclear power plants in my country, I think it is important to critically question this decision. It seems as if politicians have acted out of excessive fear of the potential dangers of nuclear energy, without taking into account the real and immediate effects of the alternatives. It is worth noting that we now get a significant part of our energy from fossil fuels such as lignite. It is undeniable that nuclear power plants can pose an enormous danger in the event of a disaster. But it is also important to remember that the burning of fossil fuels actually leads to many deaths every year. In other words, nuclear energy can kill, but other forms of energy actually do. One aspect that particularly fascinates me about this video is the fact that places that were actually hit by nuclear bombs can be visited today without any particular danger. This suggests that the radiation in the environment has reduced considerably. This leads me to a question I would like to pose: How has radiation levels in the oceans changed as a result of the discharge of highly radioactive water, as was the case after the Fukushima disaster, or as a result of the disposal of radioactive waste in the sea? Have these radioactive materials been dispersed and diluted in the vastness of the sea to such an extent that they ultimately do not have a major impact on the radioactive contamination of the environment?
This is a month after your question but I can give you a partial answer. The water coming from a functional nuclear reactor is far less radioactive than from coal plants. It's so close to background radiation it's almost impossible to detect. The Fukishima water is another story entirely and I don't know how well the radiation will be diluted. It's not the water that will be radioactive, it's everything in the water that could be dangerous. I just don't know how much radioactive gunk will float in the water nor how long it will keep floating.
Mostly Fukushima discharging into the Pacific is like adding a pinch of salt to a swimming pool. Irrelevant. But there's arguments either side for whether bioaccumulation is an issue.
@@RadioactiveDrew Indeed it stabilises and has a rather short halflife anyway. I'm firmly in the camp of "we evolved to survive on a fairly radioactive planet". Carbon-14 is mostly what's left over after the producing process (called ALPS) I don't think it's that dangerous. Not as dangerous as _not_ discharging it, letting it accumulate on land and another earthquake and tsunami causing a rapid release of _ALL_ the contaminated water at once!
A few years ago I worked for the DTRA. My office was about 2 miles down the road from the Trinity Site. My dad was a Nuclear Weapons instructor back in the late 1950s. He worked in the USAF for the Defense Special Weapons Agency. Turns out DSWA, DTRA, DNA, and Manhattan Project were all the same government agency. Loved that job and all the implications of it's past and future. My dad was able to come to White Sands and tour the Trinity Site, Mc Donald Ranch and witness a nuclear simulation test we did at the Large Blast and Thermal Simulator (LBTS).
I worked on the observatory on the mountain just east of the trinity sight and to this day you can clearly see the blast pattern in the terrain around the sight from up on top of that mountain .
The tower was not vaporized, it was blown into pieces. I spoke to Freeman Dyson and Ed Teller about it once. Because the individual pieces were found scattered about, that is what led to Project Orion.
The bulk of the metal was protected by ablation. Project Orion was the greatest/craziest idea ever---imagine sitting in a captain's chair while a nuclear bomb explodes ~100m(?) behind you every second or less!
@@truthseeker2321 no, a thin layer of surface WAS "vaporized"---ablated, to be precise. The resulting plasma protected the underlying metal, so that the tower was pretty much all there, albeit blown to pieces. The tower was actually reconstructed just to prove this.
@@maxr.dechantsreiter5226 Wow,I never heard about that. I always thought that the tremendous heat would have vaporized it, but of course, it didn't vaporize any of the ships at Bikini Atoll. Thanks for the information 👍
@@truthseeker2321 it's the same idea that protected the Space Shuttle on re-entry. In a modern H-bomb up to 3./4" (20mm) of U-238 or other heavy metal is vaporized to plasma almost instantly, the reaction force driving the implosion of DT and Pu "spark plug"
The Manhattan Project is what made me obsessed with Nuclear Physics. So much so that i became a Nuclear Engineer. This place is on my list of places to visit, but having had two kids sinxe graduating, its rather difficult. Thanks for posting this. Not enough people are educated on Nuclear Physics/Radiation. If people were, they'd better understand how intriguing it is, as well as how much potential it has to power a so called "green" future.
@@Mechantrechyrmang yes. Look up thorium molten salt reactors. Theyre a much, much different design from the common PWR/BWR reactors styles. Basically, the Thorium Salt reactors is much higher efficiency and can get more useage out of fuel than a conventional reactor. So much so that we can use whay we already consider "spent fuel" inside of them. Thus, we have some 700 years worth of fuel just sitting in storage containers in the Nevada deserts (where we send our spent fuel from current reactors). Also, if we can harness the power of fussion, we have unlimited energy. Fusion reactors will also create virtually zero nuclear waste. The only problem with fusion is.. 1. We havent been able to sustain fusion reactors for very long due to the immense heat they produce (millions of degrees). 2. The energy required to start a fusion reaction is more than the energy we get out from it (currently). We are slowly getting there with fusion, but itll probably be 15-20 years until fusion is fully achievable.
@@shaggydaboy2 Since you seem to be an expert. My chemistry teacher told us that "It is really selfish to use our Uranium resources which only last 100-200 years and pollute the planet for hundreds of thousands of years." What is your oppinion on this?
There is a great interview with Mr. Teller from 1973 saying the very same about the people in the U.S. and how there was a lack of inspiration to study physics and science in general. As you likely well know, Teller envisioned the possibilities that were created by understanding and developing nuclear energy. Unfortunately, today we see little of that vision in the U.S.
I have a big chunk of that Trinitite. My father, stationed there with the army in the early 50's, shinnied over a fence and grabbed a piece about the size of a brick. It crumbles easily so isn't that big anymore, but I inherited it. Dad said it can't be very radioactive because his piece sat in a box at the head of his bed for 50 yrs with no ill effects. He died of common heart failure in his 80's.
Trinitite isn’t that radioactive now. The most active isotope in it usually is cesium 137, which had a half-life of 30 years. So at this point it should have a little less than a quarter of that cesium left. After about 220 years it won’t be noticeable radioactive.
I drove through White Sands back in early '90's and just happened to be driving near enough to the Trinity test site to visit when it opened for it's 50 year anniversery I believe. Some Army guys with geiger counters were on hand and went around with it showing us that radioactivity was no worse than normal background radiation amazingly enough. So much for being a 10,000 year hot spot.
@@rogersmith7396 actually not. Look at Hiroshima, Nagasaki... These were precise bombs. Now you have these pocket thermonuclear and they destroy half the city and the radiation is way, way worse. Till certain point in the 50s theh were aimed at destruction, since the 70s it's aimed at inflicting casualties.
My wife's father worked for Dupont, first at Oak Ridge, then at Los Alamos, as a nuclear chemist. When we visited the museum in Los Alamos back in 2004, we were surprised to see his picture and an artifact with his last name, Madinabeitia, on it. He had no idea.
Between my Navy service and working nuclear plant refuelling outages, I have been in at least 2 dozen reactor compartments and/or reactor vessels. My total whole-body dose during my active duty time was 915 mrad, i got a larger whole body exposure in the first 4 days at Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts. Retired now, but my total lifetime occupational exposure upon retiring in 2017 was 22.79 Rad. For a comparison, based on an average background dose rate, one would receive 1.3 Rad per year, so my lifetime non-occupational dose is around 94 Rad. If I were to move to the Rockies where some of my family lives, non-occupational dose rates are 3 to 4 times higher. This means my cousin in Colorado is sitting around 300 Rad lifetime. Radiation is all around us. Your granite countertop (if you have one) will have a dose rate of 250 - 400 counts per minute from NORM, or Naturally Occuring Radioactive Materials. Got a deep(>300' deep) well? It can be extremely hot from NORM. Live with it, man. You have no choice, really!
I go mine exploring in Cornwall uk. There is the mine were Madame curie got her uranium ore from. The radon gas levels are insane. You can get youre self 30/60 msv a hour. 😂😂😂😂
@@samuelb7546 It's not specifically the Rockies, but the higher elevations get a higher exposure rate from cosmic rays and their secondary radiation from collisions between energetic particles from space interacting with air molecules up in the stratosphere. This principle was actually discovered by 19th century scientists working from balloons over Europe. They didn't know what was generating the radiation, but detected the higher levels using gold-foil electroscopes and other early instruments. Really fascinating to read how many discoveries are far older than most people know!
There's plenty of Pu in that trinitite. Fat Man was only 17% efficient, which means 83% of the core is scattered all around. In the case of Trinity, I would have to assume about the same efficiency. Also there was a U-238 tamper, so yep, there is some U out there too, just so low in radioactivity as to be negligible. I am lucky to have a bit of the real trinitite, taken from the site before the restriction, given to me by a friend who worked on the hill. He's passed on, but I was his heir due to no family. I even have his old ID badge, with the dog-tag and fissile/breedable samples in it. (They wanted to know what killed you, and what the dose of it was.)
There was some prepositioning of A bombs to Japan during the Korean War. One of them was on a B-29 that crashed at what was Susuin AFB, killing Gen. Travis & some others. The base was renamed to Travis AFB. Of course, the plutonium pit was not inside the bomb, but the explosives did go off, scattering U-238 all over the area. There's sign radiation warning signs around that area.
My Aunt, Mary Argo was a Nuclear physicist recruited from Brown University along with her husband (also a physicist) and my dads brother Harold Argo in 1943 to join the Manhattan Project. She was the ONLY WOMAN invited to the Trinity test. I'm 62 and would LOVE to have a conversation with her today about her and Harolds involvement in the building of the first Atomic weapon. Her job at Los Alamos was to calculate what a explosion of such magnitude would do to the Earths Ozone layer. I'm very proud of their accomplishments and also the rest of my family during that terrible time in world history.
She would have met Richard Feymann, who was involved in a lot of the calculations made to estimate the effects of the bomb. I met and spoke with Edward Teller, but would have like to have met Feymann.
@@ru2yaz33 My Aunt Mary Argo went on desert hikes every Sunday (their only day off) with her husband Harold (also a physicist) and Edward Teller. She said it was their only day away from the stress of the task they were trying to accomplish. She said they talked about ANYTHING but what they were doing the other 6 days a week. It was the one day they had that provided them even the smallest sense of normalcy and they never broke the rule and spoke about "The Bomb" they were helping so desperately to create.
I was lucky enough to visit the Trinity site about 4 years ago, in November. It's open only twice a year, first Saturday in April and first Saturday in November, as I recall. Being at the obelisk, the actual site of the first nuclear explosion ever is just truly amazing. I think they estimated about a teaspoonful of plutonium actually was converted to pure energy. Met some interesting people there. There was a group of Japanese people from Hiroshima. They were kind of getting closure. Then there was the bus driver over to the McDonald House, a young man who said he was thrilled to be there, as his father had worked on the Manhattan project! But the most interesting was a man with his two teenage children. He said his father landed on the beach on D Day, and survived WWII. Then on the GI bill, he went through college and got his PhD in physics, and then got a position at Los Alamos, where he met this man's mother. His mother was the first woman in US history to get a PhD in physics! He was bring his children to the Trinity site to try to educate them a little about their grandparents. Funnily, he said it wasn't working and they were just being brats :). Hey, I bet some of it sank in! All in all, a totally memorable place to visit.
@@ianloeb1672 I think the issues are that it is very far away from anywhere, so it wouldn't have much traffic. We drove for four hours from one of the nearest towns, just to get there. Also, it is situated on the White Sands Missile Range, and would need a military presence for all visitors. Again, it is very far out in the middle of nowhere, as a nuclear blast should be :). And further, there is still a lot of trinitite there which would be a public hazard if not tightly controlled. Taking it home to make a necklace would be a really bad idea. So I can at least understand it :).
In 2018 I built a facility at Stallion Range Camp just a few miles up the road. We went over to the site several times and spent as much time in and around the McDonald House as at the actual detonation site. 100 miles south, at the HQ of WSMR just east of Las Cruces, is a good museum as well as outdoor displays, where they generally have the bomb mock-up that was on the trailer. There's also a cutaway V2 rocket and good history & photographs of how we entered the space age. The museum is just inside the main gate, where there is restricted entry, but it is possible to park and walk over rather than trying to get a pass.
Yes it surprised me you had to have permission to go to the museum but they let me in. I mostly remember the V2 as it was surprising to me. Very large extremely complicated. Did'nt look like something from the 1940s. Once they let me through the gate nobody paid any attention to me. Tried to see the boneyard at Davis Monthan. They said it would take a week to get FBI clearance. I thought it was a joke to see a bunch of scrap metal and was'nt happy. I think they take bus tours now.
I would love to go here. When I was in the Navy, I got to visit Nagasaki, Japan and visited Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb Museum. In the courtyard of the museum they have a tall, green obelisk which represents ground zero for the explosion. It was a rather sobering visit and was able to get some photos of it. I'll never forget that experience.
When I visited Tokyo, I looked over on the street to find an old woman glaring at me with more hate than II 'd ever witnessed. (I'm a gaijin). I pretty much knew at the time why. I was embarrassed.
Fascinating video. Just a suggestion: It may have been helpful to add some information about the logistics of getting out there (e.g., getting on base, security/ID requirements, signing up for advance passes, etc.). I was able to see the other end of the process by visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was a very sobering experience.
Fascinating ... I haven't been to this site ... I was however in the Navy, during Vietnam, and visited Nagasaki in Japan. I have a photo of myself, standing in front of a gazebo structure with a pointed roof ... that was mapped as the location of where the bomb would have hit, if it had been a surface blast. It wasn't of course, exploding over that point, and I'm not sure how far above that spot when it exploded. The above surface blast did more damage, spreading out over a larger area.
I visited the trinity site on July 16, 1995, when they opened it up for the 50th anniversary. Trinitite pieces were everywhere, but there was an glass enclosure with undisturbed trinitite. The central area was a shallow depression, I assume from the blast.
Man , radiation is such a crazy scary thing. Because you can’t see it, can’t feel it, can’t smell it or even sense it in any way whatsoever, the only way to know if an area is irradiated is from signs posted or from equipment telling you it is.
I worked security at NTS, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Savannah River and Pantex. Interesting to see the history of the development and results of the tests that were conducted.
(Enjoyed the video - thanks). My first job out of college (late 1970s & early 80s) was as a field engineer for a company that built microwave communications equipment for the telephone industry. For a brief time I was working in the Clovis (NM) area with another engineer and over a long holiday weekend (our customer, the phone company, didn't want us working while most of their people were off) we drove down through Roswell (toured the Goddard rocket museum) and then south of Guadalupe Mtns Nat'l Park. We needed to be making our way back towards Clovis (to be back at work on Monday) but didn't want to go through El Paso (neither of us were fans of big cities) so we drove through Dell City (just south of the Texas - New Mexico border) and on county roads heading northwest through the desert (intending to reach the highway between El Paso and Alamogordo). We got to a point miles northwest of Dell City when we came upon a sign that said not to go any further as there was unexploded ordnance. We spread our maps (detailed) on the hood of our car to try and figure what to do (we didn't want to backtrack all the miles back to Dell City). Just then an old pickup came down the road from the west. An old timer (in the mandatory khaki pants, shirt and sweat-stained hat) got out along with his grandson. They walked-over, we all shook-hands, introduced ourselves, and he said "What are you boys doing ?" We told him of our dilemma. He said "The government lets us graze our cattle on the range 9 months a year ..... besides they don't bomb on Sundays." Well, that was good enough for us. We thanked the old timer and bid him and his grandson goodbye. Then we continued on our journey heading northwest. We made it to the highway without incident (didn't get blown-up) and had an uneventful trip up through Cloudcroft, Ruidosa, and then on east going down the Rio Hondo valley on our way back to Clovis. I've never forgotten the old timer's assurance that "they don't bomb on Sundays" (he clearly knew what he was talking about).
I visited Trinity with less than twenty people back in 1968 on the annual day that it was open. My husband and I were stationed with the USAF at the White Sands Missile Range, as were most of the others who went that day, too. None of the cars had air conditioning back then so we sweltered in the desert. I found a piece of Trinitite and kept it for years (visitors were so rare that it wasn't illegal to remove it then if you were stationed there) until I figured it was probably still radioactive, so I buried it in a remote desert location.
I visited the Trinity Site on the 50th Anniversary special opening day. It was an experience I will always remember... both solemn and awash in history and filled with surprises. There were protestors throwing fake blood, and new "hippies" singing as they circling the obelisk and ordinary people just wanting to feel the history of the site for themselves. I highly recommend going to this site if you get the opportunity.
The protests seem to be outside of the Army base when I’ve been there. Can’t imagine people doing a protest at the ground zero obelisk lasting long now.
I did helicopter training at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque in the early 2000's we used to fly over the Trinity site on the way to the gun range on White Sands. It is a amazing thing to see from the air. At night on NVGs it is a eerie place.
A relative was at Los Alamos for 2 years during WW2 with his wife. Paul was a scientist and lawyer. Back in the ‘70’s told me a bit about day to day life there. He said their address was a PO Box. Also that as a patent lawyer he was tasked with drawing up the patent for the atomic bomb.
@@RadioactiveDrew I bet you kept a little chunk of that... "Glass". It's ok I won't tell anyone your secret 😉😉 Obviously joking. I know you have too more integrity to do that 😊
German physics teacher writing this... Thank you for giving me (us...) these impressions I'll never be able to get in person. And especially the Geiger counter activity readings. That really is a historic site! But on the other hand I have the images of Hiroshima on my mind... to be there would be no "fun" for me but more of a "lesson". Although still debated, I tend to think that the use of those two nuclear devices really convinced the emperor of Japan that this war was lost. Thus it saved the life of many more people (Japanese and American) than were lost during the atomic blasts. Very, very cynical comparison... But war is immoral anyway. (Except very few cases... as right now the Ukrainians fighting for their country) Nevertheless: Thank you for your video, Michael B. Butter, Dresdenwa
Are you f'n kidding me? The war was immoral? No! Germans were immoral and the whole world suffered because of them. Imagine how many lives would've been saved if the bomb was developed earlier and dropped on Germany?
We all learn that war is gray, there are no good/bad sides unless it is visable without it being shoved down your throat constantly. By the end of it we'll see which side everyone was on.
The real sadness is it wasn't built early in the war and dropped on the Germans. I'm not trying to be mean. That would have saved countless innocent lives.
I've heard a counterargument for the whole 'the Bomb ended the war' thing. Namely, that the firebombing campaign the US was doing was already razing a city or more every night. That we managed it with a single weapon was not nearly as relevant to the military situation as Russia joining the war on Japan around the same time. The argument goes 'they bombed 2 more cities? so what, that's less than normal. Oh wait, russia joined too? Ah crap, cant fight both of them with any chance of victory, lets talk terms'
The last time I was there was 1988. I was part of the Navy contingent there and my job was to drive a truck with a telemetry missile, called a Vandal, up there to a temporary launch site for a very large conventional explosive test. The idea was to simulate a nuclear explosion and to launch various missles toward it to gauge the effects. There was noone around other than us and wild horses and a few antelope. It is a quiet and peaceful place.
Great video, I really enjoyed it. I went to see the new Oppenheimer film yesterday with my son and he asked if you can actually visit the Trinity site or is it still too dangerous. Curious to see that it is only 10 times the normal background radiation. I bought a geiger counter last year after Russia invaded Ukraine (Here in Germany, I was half expecting the worse and still am -accidental or on purpose!) and astonished to find some of our antique glassware is more radioactive!
Very cool my friend, I've seen videos of every testing known to man but never knew they did tours of the Trinity site. I have to say I even learned a couple new things when I watched Oppenheimer which was one hell of a movie. Thanks again for the experience, stay safe.
Great video. I bought a rock collection several years ago and one of the specimens was a chunk of green glass labeled Atomsite, White Sands NM. I knew right away it had to be from the Trinity site. Thanks to you I now know the proper name of the mineral. I've always regarded it as one of the coolest specimens in my collection.
When you fly you get way more radiation exposure than spending all day at the Trinity site. Flight crews get more radiation exposure than most nuclear power workers.
@@johnf.r6658air protects against cosmic radiation to an extent, higher altitudes = thinner air, which means more cosmic radiation gets to you. And that is just one radiation source.
Based on this video, which I saw when it came out 9 months ago, I went to the next Trinity public access on 4/1/23. I also researched and was part of the special 125 vehicle convoy that accessed the site by crossing the heart of WSMR to access Trinity from Tularosa via the “Tulie” gate on the East side versus driving 131 miles around WSMR to enter via the “Stallion” gate on the north end of the base. The entire drive across WSMR was well over 100 miles, entering at Tulie and exiting through Stallion. On that route you see it all and also breathtaking vistas and mountain ranges and outcroppings, all still largely undisturbed. It’s both sobering and exhilarating. I kept trying to imagine the impressions that were made on the engineers and scientists, largely from the tech factories and universities on the eastern side of the USA who travelled to one of the most remote areas of the continental US back in the 1940s, before freeways and interstate highways with air conditioned vehicles that float along the road. It must have been like being transported to mars. Wow. I took many photos trying to capture that feeling and impression. Thanks Drew. Visiting Trinity had been on my bucket list for more than 20 years and this video, with the information regarding the public opening, nudged me to fulfill that dream.
there is a fantastic talk on this from the inside plus his journey out to NM by nobel winning scientist who worked on this project here on YT. RICHARD FEYNMAN from the bottom .... something like that. it was fabulous! and he is funny. i just heard it. He is very special. i was amazed to hear a first hand on site talk. YT is so wonderful.
The incredible variety of units used for measuring both immediate and cumulative radiation makes it quite easy get confused. Hearing your Geiger counter clicking like that will sound disturbing to many people from films and the like. I hope that you will spread more and better understanding. Some will even be amazed that you can safely visit the site. Great video.
The tech in those Geiger counters would have shocked the original bomb engineers. Trivia: When my brother in law was interviewing for jobs he had one with a man from White Sands who offered him a job on nuclear powered space ship designs. David was ecstatic! Never saw him again, and two days later 2 FBI agents interviewed him. Hmmmm ... Golly, I'm old. I just realized that was like 40 years ago.
Funny. If you're visiting the first atomic blast site, you ought to know radioactivity is still going to be present and curious about what the Geiger Counter is reading!
People shouldn't even be out in hot-spots without counters... no wonder most people thought non-average people were in league with the devil or witches, the vast part of populations are total idiots
When i was a kid back in the 60s, my parents bought me a piece of trinitite from the Trinity site. When i was in middle school, i brought it into science class when we were studying radioactive materials, the "trinitite" showed a fairly low but above background, the orange pottery was much higher.
Insightful & fantastic video, thanks for taking us along! I, like many, have been brought here by the brilliance of the YT algorithm after seeing Oppenheimer
Just found your channel dude! I’m fascinated by the thought of a terrifying atomic bomb ever being used On a world scale. It’s a war you can’t win, and the collateral damage caused by one simply can’t be imagined. Great channel, you have a new sub!
Then why would you worry? Thermonuclear war will be the same to you as slipping on ice and dying, the same as you growing old and dying? Its not even worth worrying about. The soul advantage to nuclear firearms is that you know you will never suffer their fate, less every single person in the world will as well.
Visited Trinity back in 2001 while living in Alamogordo... They advised not to pick things up at the site, mainly to leave stuff for others to see later on, not necessarily as a safety precaution. Anyways, while waiting for others to clear out from the monument so I could get a picture taken, I noticed some weird rocks on the ground; I was maybe 25-30 feet from the monument. I picked one up and looked at it for maybe 5-8 seconds. The monument cleared out so I dropped the rock and went on with the visit. When I got home and went to brush my teeth my fingers hurt grabbing the toothbrush. I looked and I had blisters on the tips of 2 fingers and my thumb, in the hand I held the rock with. The blisters were gone by the time I woke up the next day.
Drew, this is good stuff on your channel. I live about 5 miles from the old K25 site from the Manhattan Project, and about 15 from where they made the first reactor produced Plutonium, and also where they produced the uranium used for the Hiroshima bombing. You can still take a bus tour of the graphite reactor at ORNL (X-10), the New Hope Center at Y-12 and the old K-25 site.
My guy, such a great video. Good candid conversations with other visitors. Take it east with the twirls. There is no visual information conveyed when you hold a camera at arms length and spin around. You nailed it when you set up your tripod and talked to people or narrated.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been trying to not turn around so much. I just sometimes think people like seeing more of the environment I’m in but I guess out of focus behind me isn’t the way.
@4:54 "there was no uranium in it" This is wrong. Trinity had an outer layer of some 13cm Al (Smouthing the incoming shockwaveand and not so much refelection), then an Uranium temper of some 9 cm (some of it was split by fast neutrons from plutonium fission and addet some 5kt) and then the 6cm plutonium core.
I had a great day visit to the Nevada Test Site in mid-1990s. Got a guided tour of a good portion of the site, then provided a few days of expert panel elicitation. It's interesting that Hiroshima, Japan today is a thriving city, while Detroit, Michigan is an urban disaster.
Some of the wealthiest areas in the country are in the Detroit area. The city has lost several hundred thousand in population from its peak. Some have said its their favorite place to visit.
That's because despite Hiroshima being the target of an atomic bomb it was never subject to the far greater devastation of Democrat governance as occurred in Detroit. Unlike the Trinity site, Detroit can be visited on any day, but few people have any desire to. A Fetterman device (also known as an extremely dumb, lazy and parasitical bomb) was detonated in Pennsylvania just last week so it is anticipated that devastation on a far greater scale than Detroit will occur with high yield concentrations of crime, substance abuse and social collapse fallout, albeit with equity in outcome for all other than certain people whose equity will be greater than others in the interests of equality, reparations and feelings. Perhaps of greatest note is that these advancements come from the same society which produced the first atomic and nuclear devices in the relatively short time of 70-odd years since.
@@hubertwalters4300 Ditto.. Unfortunately, I have the displeasure of being a PA resident.. If it wasn't for my daughters and grandkids I'd move to FL tomorrow.
Had my first view of the site from Oscura peak while in the Air Force during training operations. Later in the week I spent a few days down in the valley and was able to visit the site. If I remember correctly there are shops just outside the site that had large quantities of trinitite for sale.
This was very interesting and I want to thank you for taking the time to do this. There's just one thing I would like to ask. Please stop mispronouncing the word nuclear. It is like the word new, with the syllable clear with an emphasis on the AR sound. Nuclear. This is perhaps the most mispronounced word in the English language and if you're going to be presenting this material I would only ask that for the sake of my ear, you pronounce it correctly in the future. Not that it matters necessarily because your material is pretty dang cool. I've been studying the history of the nuclear industry and I'm still a proponent of nuclear power. It has a complicated history. Even while these tests were being committed, the Trinity test being far larger than they ever imagined, the scientists were getting together to vote against using the bomb. Historians have suggested that even if we hadn't taken out japan, Germany would have fallen anyway. But never mind the political ramifications. Great work and best wishes
The Trinity site allowing visitors and having a monument is very weird. I know it's not open all the time, but it's very strange seeing just how many people are here and taking pictures next to a monument that represents something that has the power to literally end the world.
@@FrickingLunatic they could just relocate the base think of the income the state could generate from this site from both locals and tourists combined every day
Awesome video! If you happen to find any naturally occurring sources of radiation in the San Bernardino or kern area, please do a video on it! I’m on the hunt for a good source of hot rocks to collect
Well...there is a place on the 395 Hwy that I'm going to do a video about soon. Its an old uranium mining area. Plenty of hot rocks. I'll try and get some footage of it this next week when I'm down that way shooting for the nuclear power station that's in the process of decommissioning.
@@RadioactiveDrew that’s right in my area! Please do! I’m looking forward to it! I’ve spent about two years looking around out here for good samples but the best I could find only gave me around 300 CPM
Always interesting to see how much is still residual after all these years. I did get a cheap counter and a card to calibrate it, like scaring people that it hits between 7-800cpm off of it.
I’ve always wanted to visit the Trinity site. I grew up outside of Augusta, GA near the Savannah River Site. I had a chance to do the B Reactor tour at Hanford this past summer and have INL on my list next. Missed the openings for NNSS and the tours there but definitely have it on my list. The Atomic Testing museum in Vegas is great as well. Definitely a must visit.
I grew up in Los Alamos, though the town has changed a lot since back then. My great-grandfather (my grandmother's father) worked on the Manhattan Project. Apparently, some of the scientists and military personnel took trinitite home as a little souvenir of the first detonation and the MPs had to go around collecting all of it. My grandma has so many stories about how the town used to be back then!
I was at the open site day this summer. First of all, according to the security personnel, this was by far the busiest visitation ever and there is some re-thinking going on. Second, there were about twenty people I saw (besides myself) with radiation counters! I saw nothing significantly above background. Even samples of trinitite were very low. However, the White Sands of the missile testing range consists of gypsum, the same stuff you have in the sheetrock in your home, but any wind at all lofts this stuff into the air.
I was stationed at white sands missile range in the early to mid 1980s. We were so isolated we had cable radio on top of cable TV. The Atomic bomb went off in Trinity site and no ine inew about it. That's how desolate we are. Interesting to visit, but he'll to live there. The best view of WSMR is in your rear view mirror.
Anybody else think it's odd that families would drive out to the middle of the desert to have their picture taken with a memorial of the first nuclear bomb test as if it were Micky Mouse?
It as odd as those "tourists" who go to visit the "Four Corner Monument" and have a photo taken with one foot/hand on the Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah ! Note that there is a long standing controversy about the location of the "exact" 'Four Corners Point', depending on which geodesic survey is taken as reference, the variation in position could be some MILES apart !
@jean-pierrelafaille8713 this is much different then some lines on a map. This site is where the world changed forever. It’s also a big deal getting out to the site because it’s on an active missile range.
@@RadioactiveDrew exactly! I'm all for roadside attractions. But this has quite a bit more gravitas than the largest ball of twine or the above mentioned Four Corners of the US... One is a geographic curiosity, while the other is the place where we learned how to bomb a whole lot of human beings. They're not the same thing.
I see you posted this 5 months ago….assuming then you were there 1 April of 2022? My son and I were there the same day as well. Moved to Phoenix in 1997, and told myself that one of these days he and I were going to visit this location. Took us 25 years, but finally made it. It did not disappoint for sure. It’s somewhat of a surreal experience standing in that bowl, knowing what occurred so many years ago. Seeing the footings of the actual tower was also very strange. I’d like to go visit again. It’s funny, but standing in the exact spot where the nuclear age was born made me actually really want more. The following day we visited the national museum of nuclear science and history up in Albuquerque. Great spot that everyone who is interested in that part of our story should all go see. We did not know it existed until two days before. Spent nearly 3/4 of a day there . Anyways, nice video!
I try and put references to how radiation levels compare to something like a chest or dental x-ray, something that most people have experienced sometime in their life. Radiation doesn't really get dangerous until it gets much higher...like in the millisievert range. It also depends on how much time you would be spending in a location that has a high level of radiation. I am planning on making a video explaining radiation levels a bit more because it is a pretty common question I get.
my dad used to work at one of these sites and later, he sadly died from a brain tumor he got from all the radiation. They said he had only about 6 months to live, but he knew he had to live for my little sister and I, so he tried his hardest to eat healthy, work out, and do a ton of stuff to stay alive for as long as possible. He was able to live another 7 years!
The radiation at a site like Trinity isn’t strong enough to cause cancer. The chemical exposure from all the rocket tests are more than enough to cause all types of cancers.
@@RadioactiveDrew Oh, we lived in White Sands, and he worked at the missile range, I don’t remember much because we had to move with my grandma by the time I was 6 or 7. But he worked at the Missile Range, then he was diagnosed with brain cancer after 2-3 years of working there.
@DeluxRobIox the chemical exposure at those rocket test sites can be extremely bad. A place in California called Santa Susana has the same problem except the contamination has migrated off the site and affected people living nearby.
@@RadioactiveDrew If I get to retire next year, I am planning on visiting the West and doing some Nuclear Tourism!! You would be interested in my latest find in an antique shop a few weeks ago - a Radi-Glo ring still on the card. Little sucker is a bit spicy - 55,000 cpm If I get a chance, I will send you a pic of it!!
Drew, the closest I have been to Trinity was at the airport in Albuquerque, but I have been to ground zero at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, 2 of the "big 3." Doubt if I'll ever make Trinity. Thanks for the video. Jon
What's more interesting is the Stanford Linear Accelerator in Palo Alto, CA. I was fortunate enough to tour and enjoy a lecture by one of the scientists about Neutrinos back in the 90's when I was in a Radiology Program.
