Rush to Build the First Atomic Bomb

2024-05-2300:26 Status:Complete Tags: Threat of Complete Destruction

Military resentment over Pearl Harbor elicited the US government and military to rile citizens against the Japanese through blatantly racist propaganda. This led to the fire bombing over Tokyo that killed 87,000 people over 40km${}^2$ (didn’t surrender) → The Battle of Okinawa (ended June 22nd) led to high damages to the US Army, Navy, Ships (12,000 American deaths, and the Japanese lost 200,000). After this massacre, it was clear that the war must be won without invasion, on American terms, without more American deaths. This is around the time that the nuclear bomb was ready to be tested and used after fine tuning. This testing needed to be discrete, and allow for plausible deniability if some civilian were to see: They chose Alamogordo, New Mexico, south of Los Alamos, in the desert known as the “White Sands.” The facility (Trinity Test Site) would be where the first bomb would be placed on July 16th, 1945. The 500,000 people within a 250km (Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico) blast radius were effected: some killed by the “black snow” that fell (radiation); livestock became sick and died out. Later called a an ammunitions accident occurred.

Lesley M. M. Blume, Author of Fallout, says that once people fail to recognize others as human, the most horrific acts are possible.

Einstein said that WWIII will be fought with weapons unimaginable, and that WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.

J. Robert Oppenheimer “We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remember the line from the Hindu Scripture: The Bhagavad-Gita, Vishnu*, ‘*Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’”