Atomic Bomb

In 1945, the United States made a decision that forever changed the face of warfare on this planet. That decision was to drop a brand new invention, the atomic bomb, on Japan. The atomic bomb was, and still is, the most feared weapon any nation could possess. This bomb took years to evolve into a useful weapon, and in this paper the timeline will unfold. Although the attack took place in 1945, the years of development are just as important.

In all reality, Hitler played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb. It was his belief that Germans were better than Jews. This provoked one of the greatest minds in our history, Albert Einstein, to leave Germany. Einstein, who was a Jew, had enough money to flee Germany and settle in America. When Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity, Einstein asserted that matter (mass) and energy were two forms of the same thing. According to Einstein, if somehow we could transform mass into energy, it would be possible to "liberate" huge amounts of energy.

However, a theory is only a theory until it is proven. During the next decade, a major step was taken in proving the theory of relativity when Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr described the structure of an atom more precisely. They said an atom consists of a positively charged core, the nucleus, and negatively charged electrons that revolve around the nucleus. It was the nucleus, scientists concluded, that had to be broken or "exploded" if atomic energy was to be liberated.        

In 1939, prior to the beginning of World War II, Albert Einstein wrote to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein and several other scientists told Roosevelt of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify Uranium-235 which might in turn be used to build an atomic bomb. The letter, which bore only Einstein's signature, helped lend urgency to efforts in the U.S. to build the atomic bomb, even though Einstein himself played no role in the work and knew nothing about it. It was shortly thereafter that the US government began the delicate task known only then as the Manhattan Project. Simply put, the Manhattan Project was committed to expedient research and production that would produce a viable atomic bomb.

The most complicated issue to be addressed was the production of ample amounts of ‘enriched’ Uranium to sustain a chain reaction. At that time, Uranium-235 was very difficult to extract. In fact, the ratio of conversion from Uranium ore to Uranium metal is 500:1. An additional drawback was that the one part of Uranium finally refined from the ore consists of over 99% Uranium-238, which is practically useless for an atomic bomb. To make it even more difficult, U-235 and U-238 are extremely similar in their chemical makeup. No ordinary chemical extraction could separate the two isotopes. Only mechanical methods could effectively separate the two. Several scientists at Columbia University finally managed to solve this dilemma though.

A massive enrichment laboratory/plant was constructed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  H.C. Urey, along with his associates and colleagues at Columbia University, devised a system that worked on the principle of gaseous diffusion. Following this process, Ernest O. Lawrence (inventor of the Cyclotron), at the University of California in Berkeley implemented a process involving magnetic separation of the two isotopes. Following the first two processes stated above, a gas centrifuge was used to further separate the lighter U-235 from the heavier non-fissionable U-238 by their mass.

Over the course of six years, from 1939 to 1945, more than two billion dollars was spent on the Manhattan Project. Finally the day came when all at Los Alamos would find out whether or not “The Gadget” (code-named as such during its development) was either going to be the colossal dud of the century or perhaps the end of the war.  It all came down to a fateful morning in midsummer, 1945.

On July 16th, 1945, in a white blaze that stretched from the basin of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico to the still dark skies, “The Gadget” ushered in “The Atomic Age”. The light of the explosion turned orange as the atomic fireball began shooting upwards at 360 feet per second, reddening and pulsing as it cooled. The characteristic mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor materialized at 30,000 feet. Beneath the cloud, all that remained of the soil at the blast site were fragments of jade colored radioactive glass caused by the heat of the reaction. The brilliant light from the detonation pierced the early morning skies with such intensity that residents from a far away neighboring community would swear that the sun came up twice that day.

Upon witnessing the explosion, reactions among the people who created the bomb were mixed. Isidor Rabi felt that the equilibrium in nature had been upset, as if humankind had become a threat to the world it inhabited. J. Robert Oppenheimer, though ecstatic about the success of the project, quoted a remembered fragment from the Bhagavad Gita (a book of ancient East Indian philosophy), "I have become Death," he said, "the destroyer of worlds." Ken Bainbridge, the test director, told Oppenheimer, "Now we've become our own predator." Several participants, shortly after viewing the results, signed petitions against unleashing the monster they had created, but their protests fell on deaf ears. As it later turned out, Jornada Del Muerto of New Mexico was not the last site on planet Earth to experience an atomic explosion.

As many people know, atomic bombs have been used only twice in warfare. The first and foremost blast site of the atomic bomb is Hiroshima. A Uranium bomb (which weighed in at over 4 & 1/2 tons) nicknamed "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima August 6th, 1945. The point of total vaporization from the blast measured one half of a mile in diameter. Total destruction ranged at one mile in diameter. Severe blast damage carried as far as two miles in diameter. At two and a half miles, everything flammable in the area burned. The remaining area of the blast zone was riddled with serious blazes that stretched out to the final edge at a little over three miles in diameter.

On August 9th 1945, Nagasaki fell to the same treatment as Hiroshima. However, this time, a Plutonium bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" was dropped on the city. Even though the "Fat Man" missed by over a mile and a half, it still leveled nearly half the city. Nagasaki's population dropped in one split-second from 422,000 to 383,000. Over 39,000 people were killed and more than 25,000 were injured. That blast was near 10 kilotons as well. Physicists who have studied each atomic explosion state that the bombs that were used had utilized only 1/10th of one percent of their respective explosive capabilities.

While the mere explosion from an atomic bomb is deadly enough, its destructive ability doesn't stop there. Atomic fallout creates another hazard as well. The rain that follows any atomic detonation is laden with radioactive particles. Many survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts succumbed to radiation poisoning due to this occurrence. The atomic detonation also has the hidden lethal surprise of affecting the future generations of those who live through it. Leukemia is among the greatest of afflictions that are passed on to the offspring of survivors.

While the main purpose behind the atomic bomb is obvious, there are many by-products that have been brought into consideration in the use of all atomic weapons. With one small atomic bomb, a massive area's communications, travel and machinery will grind to a dead halt due to the EMP (Electro- Magnetic Pulse) that is radiated from a high-altitude atomic detonation. These high-level detonations are hardly lethal, yet they deliver a strong enough EMP to scramble any and all things electronic ranging from copper wires to a computer's CPU (Central Processing Unit) within a 50 mile radius.

During the early days of “The Atomic Age”, it was a popular notion that atomic bombs would one day be used in mining operations and perhaps aid in the construction of another Panama Canal. Needless to say, this never came about. Instead, the military applications of atomic destruction increased.

The atomic bomb was, and still is, one of the most destructive forces ever created by man. Man is the only species on the face of the earth that kills it’s own and other species for sport. We are the most intelligent beings on this planet and we abuse that gift. Warfare does not only affect us immediately, the survivors of war still suffer from many ailments and the families who have lost loved ones constantly grieve. The irony is that the century’s greatest minds contributed to the most destructive force in history.