Nuclear Test Film - Trinity Shot
21 kt · Jul 16, 1945 · Alamogordo, New Mexico · 1 Hiroshimas
The world's first nuclear explosion. At 5:29 a.m. on 16 July 1945, the plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico, releasing about 21 kilotons. The flash was seen in three states; the shock wave broke windows 120 miles away. The test validated the implosion design used three weeks later over Nagasaki.
The tower was vaporized and the desert sand fused into a mildly radioactive blue-green glass later named trinitite. Fallout drifted across ranching country to the north and east; families living downwind — the Tularosa Basin downwinders — were never warned, never evacuated, and to this day are excluded from federal radiation-compensation programs. The crater remains slightly radioactive and is opened to the public twice a year.