Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Eerie Photos from the Height of the Atomic Age

Bikini Atoll, July 1946

The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violent, gray, and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse, and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined. It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately. - 
General Thomas Farrell, deputy commander of the Manhattan Project
In August of 1945, less than a month before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a secret detonation took place near Los Alamos in a valley called the Jornada del Muerto (“Journey of the Dead Man”). Hundreds of test explosions in the Southwestern U.S. deserts and Pacific Islands followed in the ensuing decades.

Jornada del Muerto

Nye County, Nevada, April 1955


More: Flashbak

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