By: Haolun Zhang

Know the recent movie, Oppenheimer? J. Robert Oppenheimer participated in the first nuclear test, Trinity, on July 16, 1945. Although the testers chose a remote spot, they didn’t anticipate its magnitude.

Code-named Trinity, the test involved a plutonium bomb, nicknamed “the Gadget,” set on top of a hundred-foot tower. At 5:29 am MWT, the bomb imploded, creating a 70000-foot-tall mushroom cloud that spread into over 46 states.

“They were aware that there were radioactive hazards, but they were thinking about acute risk in the areas around the immediate detonation site,” Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said. At that time, the scientists had almost zero knowledge of the dangerous effects of radiation. “They were not really thinking about the effects of low doses on large populations, which is exactly what the fallout problem is.” (Credit to NY Times)

Recently, a group of scientists performed a study of the fallout of Trinity. Using recently found historical weather data, they have concluded that the fallout from Trinity reached 46 states in less than 10 days from its implosion. The fallout’s length (I didn’t really get the copyright for this image but ill just put the link here Credit to study)

Trinity’s fallout, Dr. Philippe says, accounts for 87 percent of total deposition found across New Mexico. The unfortunate civilians that were near the test site, known as “downwinders,” were never able to apply for the 1990 compensation RECA (Radiation Exposure Compensation Act). RECA has given over $2.5 billion in payments to nuclear workers and other Nevada state downwinders who may have developed cancer or other fatal diseases.

“Despite the Trinity test taking place in New Mexico, many New Mexicans were left out of the original RECA legislation and nobody has ever been able to explain why,” said Senator Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat. He has helped lead efforts in Congress to expand and extend the legislation, currently due to sunset in 2024.

According to census data, over 500,000 civilians were living within a 150-mile radius from the explosion. Barbara Kent joined Carmadean’s dance camp in the desert near Ruidoso, New Mexico, in the summer of 1945. During the day, she and nine other girls learned tap and ballet. Early in the morning of July 16, she and the others were forcibly awoken from their beds by an explosion.

“We were all just shocked … and then, all of a sudden, there was this big cloud overhead and lights in the sky,” Kent recalls. “It even hurt our eyes when we looked up. The whole sky turned strange. It was as if the sun came out tremendous.”

A few hours later, she says, white flakes began to fall from above. Excited, the girls put on their bathing suits and, amid the flurries, began playing in the river. “We were grabbing all of this white, which we thought was snow, and we were putting it all over our faces,” Kent says. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. (Credit to NatGeo)

Although the site in New Mexico had been supposedly chosen for its isolation, thousands of people were within a 40-mile radius, and they had not been notified nor evacuated; they were simply dragged in, unknown of the dangers the radioactive fallout would bring as it continued to “snow” for days. (Credit to NatGeo)

The study has also been a crucial piece of information for the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, which is an organization that seeks justice for the downwinders of the Trinity event. “This new information about the Trinity bomb is monumental and a long time coming,” Tina Cordova, a co-founder of the consortium, said. “We’ve been waiting for an affirmation of the histories told by generations of people from Tularosa who witnessed the Trinity bomb and talked about how the ash fell from the sky for days afterward.” This study has documented multiple deposits of fallout in federally recognized tribal lands, which strengthens the civilians’ protest for compensation even further.