A TRIP TO THE REAL GROUND ZERO

WHERE THE FIRST ATOM BOMB WAS DETONATED I was a hundred miles away when I learned that TWICE A YEAR THEY OPEN THE GATES to let the public visit "trinity site". (Sat Apr 4 2010). I "saddled up my horse" drove there arriving at the tiny town of San Antonio, New Mexico after dark, parked for the night here on the outskirts. (notice how other boondockers like to park with "their kind")

Next day I detached from my trailer and got in line outside the gate. Young soldiers checked our drivers license and gave us directions for the 17 mile desert trip.

That's it on the horizon at the base of the mountains.

The very spot where a new era began. The bomb was atop a hundred foot steel tower--which was of course evaporated by the blast. The ground is a slight bowl of 4 or 5 acres, now fenced in. They've scraped away the top layer of glass-like radioactive material called trinitite.

Grass grows just fine here--despite scare stories that the area would be sterile for generations.

They go to great lengths to prove that the area is safe--lending anyone who ask a geiger counter.

Here's what it looked like.

Pictures line the fence showing the blast at several milliseconds intervals.

An aerial shot after the blast.

And the newspaper headlines when the truth came out.

They feel strongly about about this stuff. Went to see what it looks like.

Here it is--they will let you photograph a sample of it.---it's slightly radioactive.

Randy Philosophizes: The bomb? - on balance, a good thing or bad? And dropping it on civilians to terrorize the emperor and the Japanese Military into surrendering? Good idea or bad? Ethical or unethical? Easy questions for me: On balance a good thing---and its mega destructive succesor, the H bomb--also a good thing. And yes, dropping it on 100,000 civilians was a lesser evil than sacrificing a probable million american lives invading Japan. Fanatics must be dealt with decisively. Only the soft minded and sentimentalist fail to see that these awesome weapons actually promote peace between major powers by making wars unacceptably destructive for both sides. It's counterintuitive and paradoxical but nevertheless true that Fear of nuclear war has brought the major powers to an approximate sanity ---slowly we will empower the UN to preserve the peace. THEN we can get rid of nuclear weapons.