Nuclear and Radiological Agents Atomic apprehension

The atomic age was thrust upon the world when the United States military, backed by the highest levels of government and spurred on by Albert Einstein, assembled some of the best scientists in theoretical and atomic physics of the time to establish the heavily funded Manhattan Project in 1942. The team, led by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves and physicist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, developed the first explosive, fissile nuclear device and detonated it at the remote Trinity test site in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945. Sand at the site was fused into glass from the heat, and the blast from the relatively small test device left a crater ten feet deep and 2,400 feet in diameter; the 100-foot tower supporting the device was nearly disintegrated, almost as if it had never existed. Light and heat from the blast were witnessed at up to 150 miles away. Later that year, the U.S. used the ensuing first atomic bombs, “Little Boy”—a bomb with a rifling mechanism containing uranium (U-235) dropped on Hiroshima, and “Fat Man”—a larger imploding type bomb containing plutonium that was dropped on Nagasaki. These bombs decisively ended the war with Japan and abruptl