mexico in 1945. lead scientist oppenheimer, observed that we knew the world would not be the same. a few people laughed, a few people cried. most people were silent. next on american history tv. to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the trinity test. lost almost national laboratory senior historian, tells the story behind creating the bomb. and describes the trepidation leading up to the historic test. the lost almost national library provided the video. >> thank you for tuning into this video. you are remembering the 75th anniversary of trinity. as we come to the question i want to think about this, is trinity the greatest single scientific experiment ever conducted? so think about that this

morning, and hopefully that question will expire by the end of this show. so let's go ahead. so of course, to understand the trinity test, we have to go back and explore the historical contest context of the test. and we will do that very quickly. we have a lot of topics and we will talk about the war, and today the focus will remain on trinity though. so let's talk about the manhattan project. it did not come until into existence until the summer of 1942. the august. 1942. after years of research, and the reason it took so long for the manhattan project come into existence, is that they recognize that nuclear weapons would be a transformative

technology. i would really change the world. so we lagged behind other countries such as britain. we didn't realize how far behind we were, so the manhattan project was brought in a 1942. and it was to build atomic weapons. it is believed by many, that germany did have a nuclear weapons program, but they had not made very much progress. but we didn't know that at the time. i remember, germany was the first to produce fusion, and a lot of people thought it might be a short amount of time before adolf hitler had the bomb. that's why the reason we started to build bombs. the manhattan project, wasn't enormous national project. really an international project. when you take into account how

much international help that we had. we had many foreign scientists here. at its peak the manhattan project employed well over 100,000 people simultaneously. it has been estimated, that over half 1 million people, worked for the manhattan project at one point or another period. so a very large project. and here lost alamo's, our mission was to design, build and test and helped deliver atomic weapons in combat. we had a broad mission. despite the broader nature of our mission, relative to the rest of the manhattan project, it was pretty small, we had about 1700 staff members. and basically to do all of those things. so lost almost the personnel of the personnel of lasalle most was quite small compared to the

big project. and of course you know, that -- was our first director. he was he was thought to be the most leading physicist at the time. but the laboratory crew, during world war ii, and oppenheimer grew along with the project in his position. general groves was in charge of the entire manhattan project. now, you look at weapons design, during the manhattan project. but originally we were focused on two different types of guns so gun type of nuclear weapons was straightforward and that's

why everyone knows that uranium -- . now the plutonium gun type weapon and ahead growth. and plutonium would not work, because of the free initiation problems. the bomb could not assemble itself quickly enough to -- . so this was a significant setback for los alamos and the manhattan project. we are trying to look at it to make it work in a different way. but up to that point, there were a few people that were looking at implosion. so implosion bomb instead of shooting at each other, like you see a gun type, we're going to take ultimately plutonium, and surrounded by hikes

blossoms, and have them compress, and -- to reaction. that doesn't sound all that hard, but it is complex, and highly reliant on high explosives. i remember one point, there was no such thing as precision explosion. we had to use -- compounds to make this work. and again it was more complicated, and it was tricky. there was not a whole lot of time to do it. remember the summer of 1944, and we know where hitler is, so oppenheimer completed this in 1944. and trinity, of course being the test of the imploding bomb. these weapons, were delivered in combat, in august of 1945.

one calendar year later. so pretty remarkable achievement. so oppenheimer had to build an imploding weapon. and the research that had been going on to that time, was really a sideshow you know and i characterize it that way because, during world war ii, we had to get these things done as quickly as possible. not only where the germans pursuing a nuclear weapon in the work and the japanese, but hundreds of hundreds of americans were dying in combat every single day of war. so getting the job done, producing reliable weapons, was job one. so to spare a few people, you know and it was the most important program at the laboratory at the time.

the original ex division and original g division, and jeez did for gadget. also known as -- . and so anyway let's go onto another slide. with that as a backdrop, why do you test. well as you mentioned before, we're going to take some uranium, and it's going to go off. you may have heard people say -- how do you go into combat untested? that's not exactly true, there was no full scale test of little boy. but there are many many smaller tests. lots of tests, and it wasn't simply that as i have in my slides, it's not really that

scientists were confident, they knew that little boy would work, because of the testing that they had done at the laboratory. that meant though, are imploding plutonium bomb, they don't know if this thing is going to work or not. you see the photograph there, and bane bridge in his report on trinity, as a director he has this quote. -- -- . we must be presented with a large amount of active material. so if we're going to put this into combat, we have to know that it works. and if we're not certain that it will work, especially early on we weren't sure. so the confidence in 1944,

change into 1945. why because we did a lot of testing here at the laboratories. we did a lot of smile small testing. so all of these explosives off the shelf, we have to figure out if we could make them work, or make it work in and imploding bomb. so we started blowing stuff up, in the laboratory, we did every dynamic experience that we can do, and we gained a clear understanding of how it works. and most of the scientists are starting to get confident that this will work in combat but they are not certain. and you don't put one of these into combat, without knowing for sure it will work. so general groves, who is in charge of the entire project, he did not want to do a test. so why would the general care if we detest or not? first of all do nuclear tests, doing that is very expensive.

we're going to see some of the expense for this. and perhaps even more crucial at this point in time, it is time consuming. it is going to take time to get this ready, and we don't have time. another issue involved, is that doing a test, would use a huge supply of the world supply of plutonium. at all the general want to be told was that it could work it would work, and let's do it quickly and cheaply and end this war as quickly as possible. but offer him or intervened, and oppenheimer basically said we have to do a test. so general groves approved the test. so before we get to the test, we're going to spend five minute time, looking several aspects of the test. including its name. where did the name come from?

in this slide you see several of the ideas associated with the trinity test. it used to be a lot more conjecture about this, especially in the earlier days. and we will talk about that. we'll talk about what jumbo is and whites there, and the turquoise mine theory. and opera oppenheimer was familiar with text, such as scriptures and the hindu scriptures, so that may have inspired the name of the test as well. so they say the trinity was called that, because it represented the combination of the work of the manhattan projects three main sites. and that is a lovely story, but

they are pretty upfront in the past. i don't really tell that story. but they're pretty upfront about tell you that's an invented story for the name. so oppenheimer actually came up with the name, and after the war many years after it was over, general gross decided to write his memoirs. and it's in bookstores, and it is pretty interesting. and as general grows is writing his memoir, he want to know where the name trinity came from, and he wrote oppenheimer to ask him, and oppenheimer wrote back and said i did in fact come up with the name. but at the time, i was reading poetry, and if you look at some of the poetry, that oppenheimer was reading at the time, -- we think that that john done

palm inspired oppenheimer tuning trinity trinity. so we have our name down, so let's see the context. requirements for the test site. so this is a significant question, and one thing that i want to think about as we go through all of these questions. how do we find the site, had we keep it secure, how do we keep it safe? so put yourself in their position. and think about all the challenges associated with doing this. so let's say, that the they were lets it was they were ordered to do a test today for some reason. we would have one advantage. that is that the united states has done over 1000 nuclear tests. but let's go back to 1945. they were asked to do a test in

1945. how many nuclear tested never been done? none. every aspect of this test, is unprecedented. so where are we going to set off a nuclear blast? this is a pretty tough question. when you start to think about this. it's there's not really a great place to do it. so what would make the ideal place? and as you also noted on the slide, they recognized that the test was going to be needed early on. so they prepared for this months and months before trinity happened. so first of all, the test site has to be flat. we don't want to have you know hills or things like that that may affect anything. and it may interfere with the blast. so you need a clear flat place. we before going to be doing a lot of experience, we don't want a lot of topography. so next it's the weather which

has to be favorable. obviously, we're trying to get ready for nuclear tests, you don't want a lot of rain or snow, and all of these other potentially distracting whether notions. so we also need favorable weather because of fall out. so fallout could be a problem. we're talking about early on. like 1945. or late 1944. early 1945. fallout could be an issue, and what would make fall out a whole lot worse, is if we set off a nuclear bomb, and it gives particles into the atmosphere uranium particles, and those particles are brought back down in concentrated form by precipitation. we don't want precipitation. we want to dry, and we want is to go way up into the atmosphere, and gradually disperse all over the globe.

over a very long period of time. even with that said, they didn't think that follow was going to be a big problem in the early days preparing for the test. they just knew it could be a problem. so the main safety precaution if you will, is let's make sure that the weather is favorable, and it is just somewhere it never rains. so next, and obviously, it has to be isolated. we don't want to set off a nuclear bomb near a major city. so it has to be a place that's far enough away, so basically for security and safety reasons. so in all basically safety we don't set off a bomb near people, but for security peace for security purposes, this is the largest most secret project ever. so how do you conceal an atomic

bomb going off? it's not easy to do. so the further way from people who better. so yes, we have to set this often an isolated location. and preferably loss alamos is not gonna be far away. so also the bombs were not shipped fully assembled. they're in pieces not many pieces but most of the pieces were in los animals, and the final pieces were put together at the test site. so how far do you want to truck and atomic bomb parts all around the country? not that far. so we want to be pretty close to los alamo's. finally, by order of the secretary of the interior, native americans cannot be displaced in order to make a place for the test site as well. so start thinking about places

that would meet all those requirements. so in the slide, you see several places that were proposed as the chest area. including a few here in new mexico. also, a couple places in california. desert training area. new mexico, and texas, sandbar islands, off the coast coast of mexico. st. nicholas island, in southern california. so let me see we also have south west of cuba, that was considered, and then again in new mexico. that roughly translate to the journey of death, you know that

sounds pretty promising, for a test. but ultimately will tell you didn't happen will tell you more about that later. so also st. louis valley, near the national monument in colorado. and many of you have probably gone out there, but many of these me a lot of these requirements. there's a lot of flat areas near there. but ultimately they decided on the -- . and you'll see pictures of the place. it is not that far from dallas almost. and it will take us about three and a half hours to get there today so that is doable, it would've taken a bit longer back in world war ii a nadine

trucks it would be going 40 miles an hour. but it is drivable and that helps it's flat i remember it's a balmy area. and the army controls the area which also help for that location as well and it is certainly isolated and there are some nearby very small towns but we'll talk more about the security and the place. so they thought that jornada del muerto would make the best site. so let's go to the next slide. so we're getting ready for this test. so so preparation for this started in october of 1944. and it was completed just a few months later, in december of 1944. and here's the issue, and we see this a lot in the manhattan

project. they come under planned, and we see over and over again. here in los alamos, the lack of management experience was not an issue because, -- and as we mentioned earlier, 1700 work here. and but it did grow into a big job for oppenheimer quickly. so we build a little camp, and then we saw it's going to be a much larger deal than we sought. so we expanded it. over the next few months and it's finally complete in march of 1945. there were a dozen soldiers at the desk at the test site. they were there all the time. they were there to oversee the construction, and to guard the site. quite physically to guarded. even though we are on a military range. and you could see that howard

see bush, his identification and security photo there on the slide, and that was pretty tough business being at the test site. there were not a lot of breaks from work, and as you can see that spring, the spring of 1945, 200 laborers were hired to prepare the test site. and they work seven days a week, they worked all week long, and they worked all months long nonstop, trying to get the test site ready. so then the end of the month, after 30 days working 30 days in a row they were given a short break. and then they came back and it all over again. so again, looking back at the history of manhattan project, who were the half 1 million people, that work for the project at various points? well most of the construction

crew, and when you talk about the success of the manhattan project, it would not have been successful without the people who built loss alamos, oak ridge, the training site, and you can see that these 200 workers, built dozens of miles of roads. and they strong hundreds of polls to wires. and if you went there today you'll see many of those polls have fallen. they are three or five feet tall poles, and with wires because he's were all four diagnostics. they built three bunkers and the bunkers two of them were primarily photography, the other the largest bunker, which unfortunately no longer exists, was where the test was controlled from. and we will talk about the

towers there to towers on their. they actually built three towers during this time. we talk about this dozens of miles of roads, and that was just in preparation of the jumbo experiment. which we'll talk about soon. and let's move on to our next slide. security precautions. so security is a very very important part of the test. we have to keep the secret. and do you remember earlier when our director was talking about that the high specter would be lost if we drop the bomb on another territory? remember nuclear weapons they cause a lot of death, and widespread destruction and we've seen that before, but in the united states the allies can already do that with conventional means, nuclear

weapons were very much a psychological weapon. there's a psychological component. first of all, if we send 1000 pain planes to tokyo, the japanese had means of fighting them back. and they didn't mind fighting back. you don't there's basically but there is no fighting back against an atomic bomb. so that's a psychological aspect to this there is no fighting back. and another one is, the complete shock of seeing this new irresistible weapon in combat for the first time. it's one of the many reasons, that we did not do what should i call this, a demonstration test if you will. so it's like why don't we set one off first, and there's a lot of reasons why we don't do that, because we wanted to preserve the absolute shock factor. we wanted these to be test

weapons. we had to keep it secret. we don't want to have people in new mexico, seeing this on enormous unprecedented bomb going off, and then starting to talk. because it might infect affect our ability and our impact to shock with this weapon. so there was lots of secret aspects to this. and as you can see on the slide, the connection between lost almost and trinity, you could not use the term loss alamo's without you know when using trinity and there were very few people involved in the trinity test early on. and they didn't know about los alamos. they don't know what we are working on. and most of the soldier at the trinity site did not know about

los alamos. with a few exceptions. but that was a very was a very carefully guarded secret. i remember we've already chosen to do this test, and we're going to have more security within the base. so there were patrols, and you had people on horseback, on gps and nobody that didn't need to know didn't know. so they're all sorts of things we are working out of the time. so, this was something that we want to consider in terms of security, when the bomb goes off, how we make sure that nobody knows that it's a nuclear bomb? the first thing, and the simple thing we're going to do is set it off at four in the morning. i imagine that many of you who are watching, this if we're not up for this morning.

not many people are it's quite time of the day there will be a few people milling about, if one or two, or maybe ten people see it, who cares, we can ignore it. put about 50 or hundred people, at four in the morning, so that's one of the important security precautions. the next thing that's an important security precaution is let us say that enough people see this test that we have to publicly acknowledge it. what are we going to do in that case? we had to press releases ready. the first press release was if he bump goes off and evacuation is not necessary. that was used. we'll talk about why, a little deeper into the top, but this press release says yes, there

was a aunt mo dump on the military base, blew up, nothing to see here, go about your business. and that is it. that's press release number one. we don't want to issue a press release, we have another backup plan. what if it turns out worse than anticipated. we will talk about their contingency planning from a safety perspective. in terms of security, press release to said an ammo dump with gas shelves blew up on the bomber range, now once hurt. to protect the people of this city, or that town, the citizens were evacuated for 48 hours. so that's backup plan number two. fortunately we don't have to use that. but anyway, let's go to our

slide and talk about safety precautions. this is a pretty important part of the story because how safe trinity was remains in the news. some of you may have seen stories recently about our congressional delegation here in mexico taking interest in the cause of trinity. you can look at stories about the main organization that is interested in the business. if you want to look that up. so what we are seeing now remains. early on, they don't think the fallout was gonna be a big issue. they really didn't think in the fall it was going to be a big issue. that changes when they did the rehearsal test of 1945. we have a slide on that coming up. we will show video on it in

just a moment. but after the rehearsal test, they figured out the fallout would be a much bigger problem than they initially thought. so what are we going to do about that? they recognized that an evacuation of a nearby town, maybe an individual farm may be necessary. so they got together nearly 150 soldiers into it became known as the evacuation attachment. so there, job qualified sciences, the equipment around the state, they do know if all out levels reached a certain level that they considered dangerous. we will talk about that point much later in the presentation but with they would do is they would sort of point out, it called the evacuation

attachment. evacuate the town, the farm, whatever it may have been for about 48 hours or so. they did not think that would be necessary. but they were ready for it. so there was quite a bit of planning. please keep in mind that the 100 ton test was studied in may. we will do trinity angela i. that's not a lot of planned -- time to prepare so this became a top priority early on. the other thing is early on, we are going to test in the range in part because it never rains. there we want to make sure it never rains. they're obtaining the most up to date forecast there was also really important as well. so we have a couple of quotes. these two quotes show kind of different perspectives on safety at trinity. the first one is that we are

getting pretty close to the test at this point. it's june 27th, 1945, and he tells -- it's my opinion that no one outside of the personnel controlled by us will be measurably exposed. i see no reason to doubt that that was a completely honest opinion. they felt that they had the right controls in place. they were ready to go. the doctor of los alamos, staff member who knew quite a bit about radiation and its health effects, his name is, lewis you can see his photograph on the slide. i put his name up there. he said all i could think of was oh my gosh was oh the radioactivity.

reflecting back on trinity. having witnessed that blast, i don't think there is anything that could have prepared the witnesses for what they were about to see. so anyway, those are two different lines of thought on the issue. we will come back to talk about fallout, and what happened after we get to the test itself. we mentioned the jungle a few times. let's go back and see what that was. now if we go back in time, when the implosion project was and you remember, they don't know if it was going to work. they were not very confident that it was going to work at all. now i do, we've got plutonium with high explosives around, here probably not going to be an issue setting that high explosives off but what if for some reason there is not enough

strength to evenly, quickly compress the plutonium in the center and we don't get a reaction, a super critical reaction? but if we have really high explosion, it's going to scatter the plutonium all over the place. plutonium and enriched uranium, these are the most rarest and most valuable materials in the world today. so we can recast and start over again. so that again shows you how little confidence they had. they looked at several different methods of getting the plutonium back. and probably the most famous was jumbo. as you can see on the slide there is a very large containment vessel. i believe that it was fabricated by good cops and bad cops and shipped across here.

the idea is that we will put the imploding bomb inside a containment vessel if it produces a full nuclear deal it will vaporize the vessel, and all will be, well we will go on to win the war. but if it doesn't work? but if we set of the bomb in the containment vessel? the vessel is designed to contain the blast produced by the high explosives. the convention high explosives. so if we get a high explosive blast but no nuclear yield the vessel will hold, all the plutonium will be spluttered on the interior of the containment vessels. we can get somebody to go inside the containment vessel, scrape all the plutonium off, gather it, recast, it and try and new. so if you are thinking that doesn't sound like a very good idea, you are right, it's not a great idea.

but it was the best of multiple bad ideas. because again, this is not an easy problem. and it's something that you don't have to worry about. you want full user yields he can go back to your business trying to rank -- and. so it's not really a great idea. but again it shows the desperation at that point in time. you can see a little bit of the story. 214 ton containment vessel is pretty difficult to get rid of. it was abandoned for a while. they chose not to use this, you probably know that already. so it was hung up to 75 foot tower near ground zero. they decided to put it down on the ground at the last minute. as i mentioned it was abandoned, it was buried. there was a story that the general wrote, i probably need to update it, there's a story

the general wrote, wants to get rid of jumbo so he tried to have a destroyed. supposedly, although the general had a unlimited budget during the manhattan project he did pay attention to costs. he was scared of getting audited by congress and having to explain what he had done with the taxpayer dollars. so jumbled was not cheat. having that company fabricated halfway across the u.s.. having a shift here. how many miles of road did we create to transport jumbo to ground zero? so the general wanted to try to make jumbo the spirit. again, that's not a story i subscribe to. i don't think that's the generals way of doing business. nonetheless, though for some reason, i don't understand why, some of you may know more about this.

you can please let me know. multiple 500 pound bombs were put inside of jumbo after the war, and detonated. when they were detonated, they blew the polar caps off. what was left was a cylinder with jagged edges. -- sitting on the floor there. i don't know why that was done. but anyway, it was. now many years later i believe that -- wanted to create a museum of villages. what's better a relic if you will then jump, though jumbo was one of the few surviving actual objects used in the trinity test, and so they had hoped to bring the remnants of jumbo, and put it on display in the museum. the problem that they encountered was to reinvent.

in order to bring jumbo to the display you've got to bring it over the river and there was nothing strong enough to bring something of this way to support it. ultimately, jumbo was dug out, and it was brought up to ground zero. some of you who have been to the site have probably taken pictures of jumbo, it is interesting, one of the few surviving pieces of the tribute. anyway, that's the story of jumbo. before we leave the story if you look at the bottom photograph, the -- i think it is appropriate that we have his picture here from the training test because he is one of the many people involved in figuring out the -- that made this kind of weather possible.

let's turn to the next slide. as you can imagine, trinity was a very instrumental test. there were a lot of experiments, you can see some of the things that they're trying to assess. here first is the efficiency of the implosion. how well did we do? how much blasted we get out of our materials. look at the energy release. that's a fundamental vision, last test. that's fundamental because all that we started out with the question was trinity the most -- experiment ever conducted? remember, science experiments aside this is a test of a weapon that supposed to go to combat. when we put it to combat we want to know what is going to do. there's a lot of work that went into measuring the energy of

the blast. now there were several g moans that were placed -- in the photograph that you see there. 259 of. it at the top left of the slide. one of the reasons that we think that they recorded shop data for future losses that they thought would come. when people found out, general glow was supposedly very concerned when the bomb went off, he kept secret for a little while, it would become very public, and he was scared that everyone, the three or four state area that had a patio that was falling, in the arm that was falling apart, a cracked window, that they would be blaming it on the trinity

test. they show them the data to prove to them that it couldn't be from that project fault. that may have been the main reason. not the end of this of course. they want to observe the behavior at the far, hall the efficiency of the implosion, as the turns out, measuring fire -- is a very, very good way of measuring yield. every once in a while, we want to know with the yield was. how much did we get back of our plutonium. so we need really good photographs. really good film so we could measure it. i remember, the other thing that we talked about we've seen

vision on a very small scale. but a runaway nuclear chain reaction of an atomic bomb, this is phenomenal. it's never been done before. so just from the basic science, we want to know as much as we can and as much knowledge, that will give us some insight into this. so some of these experiments, remember all of this is -- but many of them working were quite well. and if you're interested in the trinity experience, those results were recorded and many of those reports, and you could find them in the research library today. at the national security research facility. so let's go on to the next slide. now i imagine, probably this

point, you will see some explosions. again, put yourself in their shoes. nobody has ever done a nuclear test before, so let's have a practice test. nobody's done this before. and as you can see the video, a short clip is not the trinity test. it is the 100 ton test. it's called that because nearly 100 tons of tnt was detonated. i mentioned three towers, you can see the scale, of the 100 ton test tower. and the reason they did the rehearsal, was to primarily for a couple of reasons, to calibrate all of their diagnostics. lots of diagnostics of trinity.

let's make sure that everything works. so that was one reason, and the other reason it goes back to safety. they did not understand, how significant a fallout how significant a problem in the fall it was going to be. so considering the radioactive isotopes. so it turns out they were a quarter of a second off in their diagnostics. you might not think that one quarter of a second is not a long time, but when you are recording that, a quarter second is an eternity. that was a major major problem that they were able to fix. and to toured the radioactive isotopes where they were dispersed. that is when they started planning for evacuations, which we talked about earlier.

now an important thing on the slide, before we leave here. this test was detonated on may 7th 1945. that is a significant day in the history of world war ii. on that day, the third right surrendered. nazi germany surrendered. many of you have seen the surviving senior german leaders, signing the armistice on the seventh. fighting stopped the next day on the eighth. so today is the tenth, so a couple days ago, it was the end of world war ii. so world war ii in europe, had ended using conventional means. now using conventional means, two and a world war, to end the war in europe, was no trivial matter. as i mentioned earlier, hundreds of american troops

were killed in battle in world war ii. the soviet union, of course it helped to stop world war ii, but hitler stab them in the back. and the soviet union loss between 15 and 20,000 people killed in combat, as a direct result of military action. that's every day of world war ii. 15 to 20,000 people were killed every single day. and this went on for years. the soviet union may have lost as many as 27 million people during world war ii. the germans had opted out of the war. and the germans is why we decided to start building nuclear weapons in the first place. we didn't want them to have a nuclear monopoly. so, why did world war ii come to an end? because japan chose to keep on

fighting. they were not ready to quit. theyere not ready to surrender yet. so let's take a look at another slide. because it's back to our full scale tested few minutes. they gained important experience during the test. we are going to do another significant test, right before the full scale test. we move forward to july 14th, 1945. two days before trinity is scheduled. we set off a trinity type gadget, here at the laboratory. and the only difference was there was no plutonium. we want to assess the speed of the explosion. now if you look at photographs we have here, this is a site,

and crates was the scientist who was in charge of this and this is the creutz apparatus. and edward crates was in charge. and you can see the gadgets, and there's a technician in the foreground and the background, and they are supervising the explosives. a very interesting personality this person george, who is there. and you could find him on the internet. so he fought on the side of the monarchy during the russian civil war, he was able to escape. so when the bomb was set off, at 10:18, the initial results, as they were interpreted, indicated that it was not going

to be -- fast enough to make it super critical. everyone is already completely on edge, but now is like it's not going to work. this was a complete disaster. you could see it did leave a nice hole in the ground. it's no longer there. but anyway, han's bethe he looked at the data again and he considered that there was some variables he did not take into their consideration. and he thought the test was going to work as advertised. everyone is already on edge and nobody is getting quality sleep and who's the guy in the hot

seat at this time? it is george -- . it is up to him to drive this. so he places a wager, with the director of the laboratory, and he bets a month of his salary, versus oppenheimer's ten dollars, that trinity will be a success. in less than 48 hours later. i think it's probably not a surprise, that the explosions leader, would have a bit like this. about trinity working. i don't know how you figure that out at a time. but anyway, let's see what happens. now we go back to all of these unprecedented events. it's like how do i find a place to test? how do i keep secret? how i keep it safe?

well how do you actually do the test itself? you know mostly you have all those other things, but how do you get a bomb making go off and get good data from it? so the test site was chosen based on two things, primarily and two things. weather forecast. and we talked earlier about why that was important. and the other reason was politics. so safety was not job one here. and i think when you look at the context of the situation that is completely understandable. you might be shocked to hear me say that but remember, if you've got 300 plus americans, being killed every single day, on average during world war ii. are you going to put your safety in front of there's? no we are all in this together right. so everyone the whole nation we are trying to get things done. that's not the thing about this

is not saying that we're not taking safety very seriously, we certainly did but it just was not the top priority. because everything that was going on the world, had that important. and there were things that were more important than safety. one of them was security. at that point in time. and those things kind of flipped. i enjoy living in an era where my safety comes first. but another thing that came before even security, is politics. by politics, i mean that if you are familiar with world war ii history, there is an important conference, the potsdam conference, and it was slated to begin on july 17th 1945. the reason it's an important conference, is because president truman, churchill

prime minister of united kingdom, and joseph stalin, would come together out of potsdam in germany, not far from berlin, to discuss the future. now, when we think about joseph stolen, a lot of people have forgotten stalin, and we mentioned that he helped start he helped start world war ii. but he did but over 2 million people were killed by him during his reign though. using direct or indirect situation. not a pleasant place to be. he is one of the greatest mass murderers. not too many people in front of him. he was probably's bat is out of hitler. and that's pretty bad. so we don't want the president, going into a meeting, with that guy unsure if he has the top bomb. that can alter the negotiations. so we have to support the

president. so that's why the test was advanced before the potsdam conference. those are the two things, that drove this. first it's political consideration, and second it was the weather. now commander bradbury, hopefully that mean something to people who are listening here today, bribery was our second director. he was the director from 1945 to 1970. for 25 years, he was the director of the museum. and he was a berkeley trained physicist. he was also a naval naval reserve commander. he was a group leader in the explosives division. he was in charge of writing the procedure to do the test. and what everybody here, has

followed an integrated work procedure, but how many of you have had to write one of those? i have i've had to write more than one before. not the most fun thing to do. but it's important thing for us to do. and i think it's interesting, because some of the ones i've written in the past, it was written for tests. but bradbury's procedure, is a list of things that had to be done, five pages long. that was it. and i've written procedures two and a half times along for other things, but times have changed very much. we go back to this and we see the first page of brad breeze procedure right there. and he accomplished not how to do things you see the slide there, but when many of them are going to be done. let's look at some of these

things that have to be done. first of, all how do you photograph an atomic bomb? first of all, the video that you saw earlier of the test, i like to think my good friend, pete, for providing us with that footage. he had it scanned in the footage that he prepared. pete is one of the lead innovators on the original movements which i'm sure that you have seen and enjoyed. he also won a academy award -- and he has the baggage, he has loaned us a lot of things, a lot of footage that he has worked on at no cost for all of us to enjoy. so one of the ways i should say if you would like to think pete for his generous contributions you can buy some of his products on amazon, these include movies such as trinity and beyond which i have.

he also wrote a book called how to photograph in atomic bomb. so he has written a book on the subject. the other thing is why would you care? a war is going on. you want to take a bunch of pictures. why would we care about an atomic bomb and we've already talked about it, it's not for sightseeing, it's not for preserving history for prosperity, arguably science is a scientific experiment. we need -- in order to dive in for years. keep this in mind, we're going to look at some tampers in a little while that were used for trinity. they did some pretty cool things technically to make sure that the test was recorded successfully and it was. we'll talk about that a little bit. but how do you photograph something at that level of quality? that quickly. and report it successfully. next how to transport the

gadget. we talked about this little bit earlier but think about that. it's 1920 -- 1945. how do you take a nuclear weapon from lasalle most to the test site? in a couple of pieces. so for trinity, the two main pieces, the high explosive system was sent on a military truck overnight to the trinity site the of the pit. the plutonium on the back of the sedan. so that is how they transported the gadget. now how do you put it back together? more are taking this thing apart in parts. how do you take it together? that turned out to be more of a problem that expected. how are we setting it off? are we going to get one of those looney tunes, wild

coyotes, plungers, you don't think this is happening in the history of testing before? you're wrong. how do we actually set it off? another thing. you talk about the history of testing. there are devices that we have tried to set off before and artistic past but didn't go off, their history was full of surprises and trinity was certainly no exception to that. finally, but if it doesn't work? what about the tests in the future. we saw there if there is not a room, what do we do then? how would you like to be jane? how would you like to be -- and you have to call up the general and tell him it is a complete failure? some good news.

you wouldn't call the general because he wouldn't [inaudible] . but anyway, then what do you do? how detailed the president? that's going to be a bad day. how do you make sure that they are disarm correctly. norris bradbury, he did a very good job of helping to organize this. he was very calm. he had a good sense of humor. you know bradbury for most accounts, i haven't read anything of his personally, he was a nice guy. he was a nice guy with an edge. if i can put him on the record here, he would call you on it if he knew that you were just, full of hot air i should say, but he was a nice guy with a good sense of humor. we will see hints of that as we look at the procedure in just a

few minutes. let's go onto the other slide. all. right we talked about cameras already. we won't spend a lot of time on this. there were more than 50 official cameras of different types. you can see several of them. they're in the bottom photograph. the top photograph that you see there is one of the camera's. there are three bunkers. the main control bunker and the two camera bunkers. most of the footage was captured by the 200 yards. all three of these bunkers are three and a half miles away. most of the footage and photograph was taken at north and -- i believe that we see from the photograph at the top. the west bunker looks exactly like the one there. the north bunker is hard to get. two if you visit the trinity side with a small sponsor group they might be willing to take to the west 2000 bunker.

it has a tremendous view. you can see the ground scorched from the test. the environment there. we are recording the photographs for scientific purposes, which we talk about. different cameras you can click different types of data that can be interpreted by the labs in the scientists. the other thing is that the originals were given handheld cameras to document the test. these were not official if you will. they were not for gathering scientific data, but some of the photographers, some of the stuff also had cameras and were allowed to take pictures. i would say the most iconic photo of the -- was captured by one of the photos. we'll talk about that in just a few minutes. will change the slide. as we talked about before, how

do you put eight -- together? why it was so important get the job done on july 16th. bradbury is in charge of assembling the non nuclear components of the gadget. i don't think we have to choose in this particular kitchen. if you want to see it i can send you photos. i consented film. there's also some classified footage of bribery putting that classified components together, the high explosives. you can see that if you need to know by putting a request and with the staff. anyway he's in charge of that and -- is overseeing. it the middle picture that you see there is a photograph, and it is done in the tower. the bottom, photo you can see the hundred foot tower and we'll talk about it in just a few moments.

at the bottom of the tower they put cloth around the base of the tower. -- oprah seeing [inaudible] the other person you can see prominently there is -- louis was the second person to die in an accident, that's a description for -- . it began on friday the 13th. [inaudible] depending on what happens in the trinity test. one trouble that we had was when they tried to put the pit into the high explosives it did not fit. now this caused a momentary, i don't know if i want to use crisis because they figured out

what it was almost instantly. but this was a very intense moment, as they realized that the heat expansion had caused it to expand. it wouldn't fit into the canal, to go into the center of the ball. so the solution was simple. but in the shade. let it cool down for a little and then we will try again. that is exactly what happened. so they were able to successfully completely to the installation. not long after that, and on the morning of the 14th, at the same time of that test was being done, the gadget was going up the tower. you can see from the photograph over there, there is actually some nice little footage of the tower as well. why did they put a ball on top of the tower?

a steel tower seems like a pretty significant expense. why wouldn't they just set it off the ground? >> if you set a atomic bump off the ground first of all is going to produce a lot of dust. you're not gonna get a clear view of the fireball itself. you will get a lot of dirt instead. so that is one reason. the other reason is a safety issue as well. if you set an atomic bomb off on the ground the fireball is going to come in direct contact with an awful lot of stuff. a lot of earth. and it is going to radiate the particles. it's going to attach the radioactive particles to sand and other things and eject it into the atmosphere. it's going to produce a tremendous amount of follow as well. they start by sending the fall out -- trinity's test was far too short. later tests towers would get much taller to then fall out.

but it was tell enough to get some nice photographs of the early stages of the detonation so that's why we -- have a tower. tibet it was in turn three feet or 300 feet. nevertheless, let's go on to respond. so now we are getting close to the test itself. it's july 15th. the apartment is comprised of two papers. joseph and -- so those of you who are group leaders to my knowledge joseph was a group leader longer than anyone else. forgive me, it was 31 or 33 years so if your group leader, he's been a group leader long past that let me know -- the other thing is that he was in charge of the group and the next time but he went to

[inaudible] , it looks like it's made of tinfoil. it's a big tower there. a big silver building. that was in the photograph. the reason why there is the tower there is that it's got the world's largest tanned a graph i believe it is. we've got the exhibition leader. joseph mckibbin going to make sure that the blast is ready to fire. it's going to be detonated from the south 10,000 yards. and it was scheduled for the bump to detonate at four in the morning. now that, remember we were talking quite a while back earlier in the lunchroom, why don't we set this off at four? why not a little later? because [inaudible] we don't want people to see it.

so we will set it off at four. remember why -- what are the main reasons that we chose the bomb to do the test? it never rains there. it's the desert. it's the journey of the dead man. there's no water. early morning on july 16th. a tremendous thunderstorm comes through the area. now a person on the hot seat now is the meteorologist, and his name is jack. general groves is there. if you know a little bit about general groves demeanor he could be pretty rough. he can be pretty demanding. and apparently he was pretty much in jacks space demanding that the rain stop. he wanted to know when it was going to come to an end. according to himself, he said the storms would pass with the dog. sure enough that would happen.

your options are a you can postpone the test. do it a different day. are they want to do that? no. they're not going to do it for two reasons. first of all we've already talked about politics. we've to let the president know now. it's more important than security. it's more important than safety. we're talking about dealing with stolen and the safety of the future for everyone. he's got this tool available to him. the other thing is that you are a scientist that is heavily involved with a project. you've been in lost all of us. you're in trinity. this is your experience. it can change the world. can bring this global war to an abrupt and. it could be histories greta scientific experiment. have you slept lately? how well did you sleep the night before? probably not very well.

probably you are very nervous, tents, exhausted. are you ready to wait another 24 hours? probably not. so we've got to get this done now. based on hubbards input, that the rain we go away with the dawn, the test was postponed until they break. until 5:30. now what problems that introduce? so how many people, we don't have anybody here today, except for our help here. and we're very grateful to the folks here, how many of you, watching the video today, report for this morning? how many? not very many. how many of you are up at 5:30? probably quite a few more. so probably quite a few more people, are going to see this test. so we better get at least one

of our press sets ready to go. and the countdown begins. it's 20-minute countdown. at 5:09 that morning. another interesting story, side story before we see what happens, we find at the bottom of the slide, on the left the end of the countdown. you'll notice monday july 16th, oh 400. didn't work that we had to be delayed. the step before the on july 15th, to bring the chaplain down there. -- . again, bradbury is pretty calm throughout this. and they must felt like it was up, as it pour down raining in

the time leading up to the test. there are a lot of reasons why they conduct a nuclear test. in the case of trinity the most important question is very simple, will it work? let's go to our next slide and find out. and you all know it does. the countdown, ended with the word now. three, two, one, now. 5:20 9:45 in the morning. this is remarkable from a scientific standpoint. and also from a records development but now didn't mean 500 or thousand planes it's not that kind of firepower you need

one plane and it's one bomb and one moment to take out and entire city. this is going to immediately change, the state of the war. so the fireball, it immediately reached temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees, the mushroom cloud were about thousand meters wide, before it goes up in a ball smoke. and whenever you watch footage, of the tests on youtube and things like that, on tv, you see an explosion. immediately here, it completely -- introduced the noise from that. so one atomic bomb goes off, and the nearest observers were five how six miles away. we will see an incredibly brilliant lights.

lights that you never seen before. and you will be in complete silence. for quite awhile actually. at that distance, it will take 30 to 40 seconds, for the last wave to reach you. and the blast you could feel, sound goes along with that. for the first 30 or 40 seconds, brilliant light, and no sound at all. that must have been a very interesting and unusual and disorienting experience. when the shockwave arrives, it's like somebody getting a leaf blower, putting it on high, putting it right in front of you, and shooting a gun off next year here. because you will feel the blast of the bomb. you're going to hear the sound, tremendous sound it made. which is like a large artillery

going off. that's what it would've been like to be there. and a cloud, that is produced by trinity, reached an altitude of over 40,000 feet within five minutes. so it dispersed over the globe. now at 5:30 in the morning, there are few people up to witnesses test, so they had to enforce and go to press release number one. you can see, and hopefully you can read this, but the associated press article, picked up this press release. and said there was a tremendous flash, i think it was a display of pyrotechnics, at the range. and as we mentioned before, nobody was hurt, nothing to see

here, we have a laxative but it's all taken care of. so this kind of came and it wasn't a whole lot of fanfare. the photograph that is there is the only color photographs of trinity that we have. and it was taken by jack adams. he was one of the members of the photography and film team. and he had a hand held camera, and capture that image. let's go onto our next slide. here's some samples, of the different types of photography, and films that were captured. we had these really high speed cameras. and to capture the fireball, and the aerial cameras. these were for taking large

panoramic films of a large area. so we have some of the original films that were taken, and i bet none of you have seen films like this before. maybe a few, but these are our nine inch for film. each frame, is about the size of a sheet of paper. we still have this big canisters. and i say we, actually our friends at -- happen able to scan some films for us. but can you imagine a piece of film that big can you just put on a machine, the answer is no. and they did this, they put the film on the hand cranks, and would prank it one frame at a time. so they spent a lot of time, getting those films for us. and then again, what you see

there at the bottom, those are some of the iconic photographs of the trinity test. and look at the photo there, and because you haven't seen this, and you see nice photographs of the nice fireballs, which can be measured. so next lied. let's go ahead and play this film. i think we've got like 45 seconds. from different cameras of the trinity test. it's unfolding. as you watch this film, i want you to put yourself in the position of this at the time. what must have been like to have been there, to had witnessed this incredible -- . to lower the range of emotions

they were experiencing. and also, so if you're interested in this we do have more at the national security research. so let's go onto our next slide. these are a few of my favorite eyewitness inscriptions of the test. we had 18 nobel laureates, who were associated with the laboratory during world war ii. in one way or another they were associated. is there another nobel laureate who is there from mexico, he

says we saw the whole thing and flush it was unbelievable despite the very dark glasses we wore. and phil -- he said the thing that got me was not the flash, but the blinding heat of a bright day on your face in the cold desert morning. remember ten miles away, he could feel the heat. and we do have some interesting patents taken from this technology, that we still maintain today. it's turned red it turns yellow, and red and beautiful purple. but a lot of times people would describe these tests, and indeed i think that they are

incredible sites to behold. and they describe this here. and he said the new york times, was on hand to cover the first nuclear test. and william lawrence, he was sworn to secrecy. and remember the manhattan project it was necessary, to let the public know what it happened, as quickly as possible, and -- anyway lawrence said it's as though the earth had opened and the skies had split. finally what you see behind

this, was a photograph that was taken by harold -- . at the university of chicago. and behind the photograph, you can see families typed up observations of the test. and the top half he describes what, it was like to witness the test. and he tore a piece of paper, and dropped pieces of the papal, as the blast wave travel through, and so that push the paper, and he measured the distance that the paper flew. so all this displacement, and he calculated that it was about 2000 tons of tnt equivalent, based on the experiment that he

did. so let's go onto our next slide. that's would look like, no one about the emotional feeling after that. so the scientists have work long days, long long days. six days a week, long into the night they had a lot invested in this. so for the first thing the first reaction i would like to share with you, is a video. the view we're going to see, it's a first person and you're talking about what it was like to be at the trinity test years after. i want to preface this video with this, there's a good story in this video, by a historian. and you could buy this online. that talks about this clip.

and oppenheimer says i remember the line, but it's like the god of war is trying to drill up the threats. a lot of people look at this clip and thought oh oppenheimer, he is the got of war. ready to go into battle. but that is not how he sees himself. he does not see himself as the destroyer of worlds. oppenheimer sees himself, as the prints. who is reluctant to do his duty. but recognizes, it's the only way. so i think as you watch this film, which is about 45 seconds or so, just bear that in mind let's go ahead and watch it

some people, cried some people were silent. the scripture, lava ceta. [inaudible] who says i am becoming a destroyer. >> that's a pretty dramatic quote. one i would imagine is used quite often. before i talk about the background, oppenheimer was not

accented about combat. he as much as anybody else at that point in time knew is going to happen. i think to oppenheimer it was the best decision, the best option of several bad option of bringing the war to an end. i think that he regretted the nature enable this kind of technology. rolled war too was an exceptionally unpleasant setting for the circumstances. let's look at these other folks. on the one hand you have the ethereal -- , i think it reflects what we're watching at the time. he says people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. i did. that is how a lot of people

felt after years of bloodshed after losing friends, family members, confidants. you see his quote next. my favorite quote comes from victor. i think if you had to summarize the complete trinity emotional experience you would get it from one of our group leaders. victor says our first feeling was one of elation, then we realized we were tired, and then we were worried. well there you have it. of course there were elated. this was incredible scientific experiment. it worked. all of the hours and days. all of the work that they put into making this a success. it paid off. you would be elated as well. then you would be tired. once the adrenaline left you would recognize that you hadn't been sleeping for at least a week. you were exhausted.

then finally, they were worried. we talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. before we do that though, -- she was a an official observer. she had an inkling that something was going on. she wasn't at the treatment site but she did see it from the balance, far away, she said that the spectacle was tremendous, beautiful, magnificent, beautiful, humbling, and scary. -- stand did not witness the trinity test. he was one of our mathematicians. so the ride back from trinity for the scientists to los almost was probably a very quiet and somber one. they were very worried.

why? why would you be worried victor? we won the race to the top -- atomic bomb. he recognized and said to the other scientists, america's nuclear monopoly wouldn't last forever. he recognized that other countries would eventually have nuclear weapons. and they imagine world war three. another global war in which nations chose to use this infection which came from los almost against each other in combat. they were tremendously worried. after taking the long ride back to los alamos there was -- waiting for him. he said you can see it on their faces. as something big and strong happen. of course to introduce a little bit more liberty into this, another popular quote comes from george.

remember he was almost a success against oppenheimer. they were in a bunker together. he said you only ten dollars, which oppenheimer didn't have on him at the time. -- had him signed that ten dollar bill, unfortunately we did not have that here. i wish we did. if someone knows where the ten dollars is about we can find more ten dollars to pay for it to put it on display in a museum. let's go onto another slide. we have talked about the emotional aftermath, what about the physical aftermath? we've already talked about the blast. it came in contact with the ground. it had been in the atmosphere,

but a lot of it didn't reach the inner atmosphere. a lot of the earth was melted, and the melted sand over the service, where the malted sand came in contact with the, ground remember it was in a environment where it was tens of millions of degrees hot for a period of time, when it cooled, it reads solidified and created a clean glass-ish material. we have some significant pieces. if you would like to see it, when you go to see it take a moment to consider the history of that object. that had been in the fire hall of the first nuclear test. it has got much better,

fortunately. the force of the explosion produced a shallow crater around ground zero. you really can't tell where the creator is now. it was large but shallow. and it didn't push the grand enough to expose the concrete or exposed footings of the trading tower. if you look at the issue, the second from the left, you would see general roses aid, i forget his name, nichols. he wrote a book called the -- truth. they are looking at one of the feelings of the tower. bear in mind, what you're looking at, you can see the remodel from the concrete. that point during the trinity test, the fourth test, it had been underground. the test vaporized, blew away

the concrete. to some extent, -- right there in the ground. the final vote of that you see, that is an aerial view of the trinity site. now look at the bottom right. see that little dark spot with the rings around it? the little dark spot is from the 100 ton test. it's not quite 100 tons. it was the largest measured blast in history up until that point in time. there had been large explosions, but they were results of accidents or massive minds in world war one. the 100 ton test had a -- as the largest scientific explosion, and it made that little doubt that you see on the desert floor there. now look at the 600 meter wide

area, the dark version of the floorboard. that's not all that plutonium will do. now let's go to another spot. i told you we would come back to fall out. it's a important topic, you may have seen in the news lately. trinity produced a significant amount of fallout, it scooped up a lot of desert sand, and attached very small amounts of plutonium to radiated part -- particles. a lot of that stuff went way up into the atmosphere, and it came out, it's settled out, if you see from the map here, this isn't conjecture. there was a lot of data that was collected during the

trinity test. all of those who had models of the -- the map isn't just a guess. it's based on data which is just preserved here at the national security research center. it got to some pretty high-levels around ground zero, they were readable, measurable readings in places like stafford to lasalle amiss as well. july 14th, two days before the test, stafford was kind of the doctor of the entire -- project. over a two-week period, now, that may seem very high to some of you here listening to this today. and it is very high by today's standards. back then, it was largely a.

guess sometimes, i have heard people say on one hand they knew that this was dangerous. they just didn't care. on the other hand i have heard people say didn't know anything back then. neither of those things is true. they knew some. they knew that this was going to be hazardous. it was a different rule with different priorities but they cared. they put a lot of effort into trinity. they had learned an awful lot about these new materials, the dangers of them. but what they have learned in the future years is not nearly as much as we know now. especially in the long term. i mean what do -- do to people and animals over a long period of time. there is almost no data in existence because this is the material. some of you may know about the

radio -- from the late teens, early twenties. many used radio paint, they grew ill, that was only litigated in court in the mid 19 thirties. so there really was almost no good data on the long term effects of radiation available at that point in time. but knowing what they do, knowing that this would be dangerous, they made it best guess based on what they had at that point in time. again, some of you, that seems like quite a bit of a two-year period. by today standards it is. in fact, today, as a -- worker you are expected to be exposed to -- over a lifetime. the standard has changed.

one family received as much as 175 r over a two-week period. the project need a effort to -- a comparison count. they wanted to find every person. they want to know where the cattle were leading up to trinity. as you can see, generally people fared very well. this is something that still contested today and imagine that you will see this every now and again as covid-19 comes and goes. we will see. but the cattle in the area there, most people at 5:30 in the morning were still inside. some were asleep, some were still working. the cattle were not inside drinking their coffee at four. they're outside pretty much all

the time, so the radiance coming back down to earth, it stayed, and it stayed, and it burns. and it launches in their coats. so the manhattan project, 75 of the most injured articles, bring them back here to los alamo's. now we are not really too into the cattle ranching area here at los alamos. we don't really know what to do with them. so eventually they were shipped to tennessee. you can see a picture of trinity, many generations later into tennessee near the well where they were run, for generations and generations. virtually all of them reproduced healthy offspring.

so let's move on. we will leave the topic for now, as we start to bring the long letter to a close. my apologies to my colleagues who were doing the recording today. those of you who were watching this turn it off or fast forward to the and to -- the folks here, especially during these times, with the virus. this talk about trinity. the beginning of world war ii, i may not touch on subjects that you're interested in. to let me know simply your questions. you can as the tough questions, and this was a momentous decision. so i look forward to hearing from you. we're just going to breeze through this today.

august six 1945, here she met was attacked. after the potsdam conference, president truman warned the japanese. he told them that you have to surrender unconditionally, or you will face utter destruction. and that's a promise he made good on it. and the japanese chose to respond to president truman by ignoring him. and they did so at their own peril. and remember, people say was necessary to use the atomic bomb attack to end world war ii? well necessary to do what? to win? no the japanese were going to be defeated one way or another, but what we, and when i say we see allies, they won the war in europe ok, most of our resources were going in to winning the war in europe.

in the pacific, the allies had beaten up on the japanese for years, with a fraction of the resources available. most of them are over here, now that the germans had been knocked out of world war ii, we're going to be able to take all of these resources here, and put them over here with what we've already got. so it would be a path to victory. and you know that was after the first bomb exploded at pearl harbor, and they refused to surrender to us and so i think that the atomic bomb, we're very were very important ingredient, in bringing world war ii to an abrupt halt. world war ii did not end in victory for the allies, because of one two or even four things. there were a lot of things that came together to bring world war ii, to a successful end. to a an abrupt conclusion.

years of conventional defeats. the strategic bombing in japan. which did not start until late 1944. the blockade of japan, which was already in effect and brought japan to the brink of starvation. the use of atomic bombs. world war ii would have continued on, i don't know for how long. days weeks months. but it would've continued on. so one more you know one more the of the important ingredients of the top wall and bring the war to an end. you look at here sheila on august six 1945, this was an element of the war you couldn't fight back against. japanese soldiers had no problems dying for their come for their country, but they didn't even have a chance to fight for their country. this is a weapon that did not

even give them the opportunity. and the next thing to happen, was the soviet union entered the war against japan. and the soviet union and japan had a non aggression pact. but the soviet union as the other allies did, that imperial japan was about to be history. they got involved in the war because we had asked them to. this is not a quick land grab in asia, we wanted the soviet union involved in the war. and we asked them if they can declare war on the japanese, so the work it end quickly and decisively. and stalin said okay, three months after the collapse, of nazi germany, we will declare war. so remember which day did the violence stop in your? may 8th. august 8th, three months later,

soviet union declared war on japan as we asked them to. and on august 9th, hundreds of thousands of soviet soldiers, invaded manchuria. in that short campaign, the red army killed about 84,000 japanese soldiers. now august the 9th did not get any better for the japanese. a few hours later, around lunchtime, early that morning, a second bomb was dropped on nagasaki japan. that was an imploding bomb, the same type that was tested in trinity. and it was 21 killer tons. i think, this is a significant step, and bringing the war to a successful an abrupt conclusion. because of the second bomb that was dropped a nagasaki.

so there is a letter written to the japanese, and said i hate the physics, and it's been used for a destructive purpose, but we have tested these, and we have dropped at his anatomic bomb on your, sheila and megan tacky, and if you don't surrender now there's many more. and the objects here, as to it was basically shot. and we had another shock nagasaki. so the allies -- . you know making material for new nuclear weapons is difficult. the japanese had nuclear weapons program. and maybe it took months if

might have taken years to produce the material and i had months even years to continue for better peace terms. so maybe the japanese didn't want to surrender for sure, but they wanted to do it on their terms. they did not want to be tried for war crimes, they did not want to be occupied, they wanted to continue to occupy all the land that they still had their possession and they want to make sure that they would retain their position. so they would, surrender but on those terms. how are we going to get them to surrender on a condition? -- i think that is why the atomic bombs were such an important ingredient to bring this world war to an end. because we are not going to need to bring these hundreds of americans american soldiers and soviet soldier is attacking japan, we can just destroy your culture, your people, you're

cities, from the air, and you won't even get a chance to fight back. or you can take your chances and come to the surrender table and see if we treat you mercifully, unconditional, which the allies did. so a few days after nagasaki, nearly a week, actually, it was a little more than a week after the bombing of hiroshima, the japanese did surrender unconditionally, in hopes of, at least some of the things that i mentioned no guarantee that any of, them -- of august 14th, world war ii, it came to an and a little after that. here lost almost received the army. you can see a photograph of a general groves giving a commemorative scroll to -- me. a nice little photograph you

see on the bottom right. the pendant that you see flying is on display on the sixth floor of the building, as a reminder of the awesome responsibility that the united states has for bringing the weapons into existence in the first place. if ever they should use them in combat. it is a reminder of our heritage started 75 years ago. let's look at a few more slides very quickly. what is the legacy of trinity? is it a balm test. is it a silence experiment. the answer is yes. the legacy of trinity is multi faceted. and it is because so many things came together at trinity. let's look at a few of these things. first of, all symbolically trinity marked the beginning of the final chapter of the

existence of the war on japan. the allies were going to win the war one way or another, with trinity and advent of new weapons it just meant that is going to be a lot less al bloody for the allies. not necessarily the japanese. but if it wasn't clear that the and was near four here she made it was clear with the trinity. that's important considering the scale of the virus in world war ii. -- died in world war ii which resulted in military actions. that was going to come to an abrupt and very quickly. trinity open a new era in human history. and it's the era that we live in today. there are so many, at one point the united states had over 30,000 nuclear weapons. at one point the soviet union had over 40,000 nuclear weapons. people have been scared of

nuclear war. betty human were brought on by human or technological error. humanity had enough firepower to destroy itself, maybe many times over. that was something that could not have been done before. but there is also a lot of hope associated with this new era. i think a lot of nuclear technology still has not been fully exploited or close to it. i think nuclear technology will help to ensure a sustainable and hopefully more secure future for the people of this world. the other thing that i think has become clear is that nuclear weapons have played an important part in rendering global wars between the great powers obsolete. so far at least that seems to be the case. i'm not saying that nuclear weapons are the only ingredient

in, that but they are obviously significant. so, then mixed legacies. as i mentioned before, have you've been thinking about it during the talk this evening? do you think that is the greatest scientific experiment ever conducted? i think there's a strong case. i think that other scientific experiments have strong cases as well but when you consider trinity, look at trinity and think about all of the appeals of signs that wanted to making trinity possible. chemistry, nuclear science, physics, etc etc. these weren't new fields of science but they certainly reached a crescendo at trinity. so many scientific fields were pushed to new limits all at the same time. as we mentioned, before trinity

resulted in a new era of human contact. how many human scientific experience could we say that about? not many. trinity was really a significant, significant scientific experiment. arguably the most important. other candidates from just the manhattan project. what about the -- experiment. the world's first self sustained nuclear chain reaction, first controlled nuclear reaction. the world's first uncontrolled nuclear reaction. talk amongst yourselves. let me know what you think. let me know what your opinion is. hopefully it will spur some very good conversations and some inspiration for the next great scientific experiment which i had to come out of our laboratory. he will see there in the next bullet, trinity in the age of super sites.

have you ever heard people use that phrase before? super science. i've rarely heard anyone attempt to define it. i well. there have always been scientific experiments. there have always been teams working together on scientific experiments. maybe large teams. maybe there have been experiments where you've had large teams sponsor by the government. that's all true. but there is nothing in history like the manhattan project. not in terms of scale, and that would say not in terms of accomplishment. you have a massive team. not to 1700 staff members here at loss alamos. you have half 1 million people contributing in one way or another at various points. half 1 million people for just one scientific project. you had academia playing major

rules. academic universities. academic institutions. the government invested 2 million dollars in this. i know that by today standards that might not seem like much, even with that vigor adjusted for inflation it's dill a relatively low number. but given that the started not long after the depression, as the depression was coming to an end, that was a massive, massive expenditure, time of war by the united states. you had all of the states coming together and doing something that would not have been possible for any one of those incidents. and to me that is what super science really is. when you can have an entire nation, or nations coming together, investing tremendous amount of money, time and other resources. people, working together to change the world. that is super science. and there are few examples of that in history.

i think that trinity, did very much represent the beginning of this new era and we have seen it and it served as a template, for other projects that will happen in the future. or the apollo program you know things like that. so i think that trinity this is very much part of its legacy as well. and we are just about done now, and i had the opportunity to visit the trinity site for the 70th anniversary. my traveling companion was charlie mcmillon. one of our former directors here. and charlie, had never visited the trinity site before. and when the 70th anniversary was coming up, he recognized the magnitude of the anniversary. and he wanted to make sure, that he visited trinity first,

before he even spoke about it. so we drove down their, together and that was a lot of fun. we've got to spend it all time together, and i wanted to hear his thoughts on a lot of topics, and on the slide you might remember remember that famous photo of oppenheimer going up the trinity tower. so what you see here, is charlie at that same location. but as you can see, things have changed. if you look carefully, you can see a little bit of rebar, sticking up from the ground. and if cut back on that, and this is also the vegetation has come back as well. and the creator, it is very shallow, so for those of you who have been to nevada, and

you've seen those creators, there's nothing like that at trinity. there is no tower, there is no bomb, there is no blast. and it's an interesting historical site, because all of those things are gone. it was a site where everything was just about you know was there that was destroyed. so the few things that remain, you can see it there, you can see the ranch house in the middle. and the obelisk you see there on the left, was put there years later. but it was an interesting thing to go back to trinity and i hope you have the opportunity to visit trinity on the 75th anniversary, and especially those of you you know even within our family here at the

laboratory, you don't get a chance to go see it. you should get back and see it and appreciate your legacy and your responsibility when it comes to this technology. and how it started. at that place, at that point in time. so let's look at another slide, and bring this to a conclusion. we have two more slides. so some of you may be interested, in reading more about trinity. there is really not that much in terms of books on it. there are a couple. one of them you can see the late frank -- . i know him he was a professor and unfortunately he's not with us anymore. but i recommend his book. it's a little bit data because more information has come to light. and also james --

. also wrote it, he has a book coming out dedicated only to trinity. other late this year early next year, and jim is a great writer, and you will have the most current up-to-date research, and due to the freedom of information act, we have additional information. so i recommend that book when it comes out. and let's look at one more slide, and i had a lot of help putting this talk together. and i know that talks usually don't come with credits, but i want to include some of mine. i want to thank all the souls. for putting this together. i hope you enjoyed it. i hope it's been informative, and i hope that it is inspirational for you, and it will inspire you to do great things.

because you know los alamos really is, this you know is a place where you can change the world. and by the way i hope you will recognize, that we all bear responsibility for this technology. and may we continue to recognize, and hold sacred that responsibility that we have, for bringing this technology into the world. it's an important responsibility, and it will be around for a long time i think. and i think that we are blessed to have such incredible people like yourselves, who are at the front of it. thank you for tuning in and watching the top, and making it to the credit. send me an email with questions or, corrections. and i hope it will get to see soviet. you take care stay safe stay healthy.