Journey of the Dead Man

    Tucked away in a remote and desolate corner of New Mexico, the Trinity Site, the place where the first atomic bomb was exploded on July 16, 1945, is a place of unfathomable power.

    It doesn’t come from the force of that blast estimated to be equal to some 20,000 tons of TNT. Nor does it come from the lingering increase in background radiation still detectable today. Rather it comes from the societal and spiritual echoes that continue to reverberate not just across space, but also across time.

    It was an act that unceremoniously ushered out an innocent age, and marked the beginning of a chaotic one that has yet to advance in wisdom to match the ability to unleash previously unimaginable death and destruction.

    The site continues to attract as many as 10,000 visitors annually on the two Saturdays (one in October, the other in April) the US Army opens it to the public.

    With the outside temperature hovering around 44 degrees, we get in the line of vehicles about a half hour before the gates to the White Sands Missile Range are scheduled to open at 8 a.m. The rising sun has just peeked over the ridge of the Oscura (dark) Mountains to the east and is eagerly devouring the low bank of ground fog that settled into the valley overnight. The scene is not unlike that outside a music festival with people milling about their cars or motorcycles, taking photos, standing tall on one foot and craning their necks to see if the line was ready to move.

    At 8 a.m. sharp the two-mile long line begins moving. After producing our photo IDs, we head out for the 15-mile drive across the desert to the site shown on early maps as “Jornada del Muerto,” which translates roughly to “Journey of the dead man.”

    The atomic bomb was the culmination of World War II’s Manhattan Project which employed the nation’s top scientists in a race to build one before the Germans. It was exactly that effort that prompted a Nazi U-boat to drop off a pair of spies at Hancock Point, across Frenchmans Bay from Bar Harbor in the fall of 1944.

    The entire operation at the Trinity Site, from parking, to food, to port-a-potty placement, runs with military precision. We park and after getting our bearings, join the procession taking the half-mile walk down a fenced-in corridor to the lava rock obelisk that marks the center of ground zero.

Only a single, shattered concrete footing of the 100-foot tower holding the first bomb, known as “the gadget,” remains. In just seconds, the dust cloud and fireball soared high into the air forming the now-familiar mushroom cloud, part of which reached 7 miles high. The force of the blast carved a 400-foot wide crater which has since been filled in.

    It amazes me to read that some scientists working on the bomb weren’t even sure it would work. In fact, some critics worried it might ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on earth.

    The blast seared the desert sand to a layer of smooth green glass known now as Trinitite. Most large pieces of the slightly radioactive rock were either picked up by collectors years ago or buried by the military. It is against the law to collect it now although not illegal to own because so much of it is in circulation. Along with rattlesnake warnings, signs at the site explain removing anything from the area is illegal.

    It didn’t take long for me to notice a pervasive beeping. Apparently bringing along a Geiger Counter is a popular pastime. It’s not to check for residual danger, however, but rather to aid in the collection of Trinitite which several people seem to be doing with oblivious abandon. The previous night’s rains had rinsed off all the small stones at the surface making it easy to spot the remaining pieces, most approximately the size of a sunflower seed. The security personnel and military folks patrolling the site totally ignore them.

    A few photos mounted on the chain-link fence and shelter over a remaining section of the crater are the only other displays. People pose for photos with the monument, look at the exhibits, and mill about. We wait our turn, take a few photos, and read the interpretive information.

    Just outside the perimeter of the blast site a replica of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan, sits on a flatbed trailer. I walk over and stare at it on the way out but can’t bring myself to take a photo.

It might be my way of compartmentalizing the impressive technological achievement which brought a speedy end to the war, with the fact the next two bombs killed 105,000 mostly innocent people.

    They also launched the Nuclear Age, ignited a Cold War, left a generation of school children cowering under school desks during duck and cover drills, and established a paradigm holding that peace can only be maintained by mutually assuring the destruction of all.

    Leaving the military base around midday, we pass through a group of protestors known as the “Downwinders.” They are the families of those living around the Trinity Site, some as close as 12 miles away, when the “gadget,” went off. After the blast, tests showed that 75 percent of the highly toxic Plutonium in the core didn’t fuse and rained down for days on the surrounding areas. Although a federal fund was established in 1990 to compensate people living near the Nevada test site where most above-ground nuclear testing was done, no help has ever been extended to the New Mexican families. Surprise, surprise, they are not wealthy, well-connected or country club members.

    I guess there’s some comfort in the fact that when they did set off that first atomic bomb the atmosphere didn’t catch fire. But some other pretty dreadful things were spawned in that thermonuclear crucible. Perhaps then, that is the real power of the Trinity Site: the understanding that when human hubris attempts to manipulate unfathomable power, be prepared for the inevitable, unexpected, long-reaching, and potentially horrible consequences.

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