Rajat Narang
On July 16, 1945, at 05:25 AM, just half-an-hour prior to sunrise, the Second Sun rose in New Mexico’s night sky with the Trinity test which brilliantly lit up the dark sky with light so bright that it forced even a blind girl to literally sit-up from sleep and take notice of the flash almost 100 miles away from the test site.This first nuclear age, thus, witnessed the detonation & testing of nuclear weapons on land, below surface, under water as well as in space as humanity was still coming to grips with the immense power of the ’Fire of the Gods’ which is almost 100 million times more powerful than typical chemical reactions. It also further increased humans’ self-destructive capability by another million times within less than 2 decades of the end of WWII. The first nuclear age also witnessed the mass production of nuclear weapons with almost 70,000+ nukes produced collectively, with the U.S alone producing 8,000+ nukes in a single, landmark year of 1958; along with the development of a range of exotic strategic & tactical nukes ranging from nuclear artillery shells, tactical missiles, depth charges, landmines and even backpacks with the probability of their accidental launch triggering an accidental, all-out nuclear war becoming a very real possibility through the Cold War.This effort takes-off at the promising dawn of the atomic age and longitudinally tracks as to how that benevolent promise of the power of the atom instead turned into a curse for mankind. It builds and presents the real, behind-the- scenes narrative on the first nuclear age with a longitudinal, relative, global and technological perspective based on recently declassified government documents, highly classified CIA and KGB intelligence files & reports from the era, interviews given & perspectives shared by the scientists & personnel actually involved and latest scientific researches revealing & providing an actual impact assessment of the cavalier nuclear missions, operations and activities deemed innocuous at the time.It also unravels as to how the scientists and test planners of the era were more or less reckless in their approach as well as conduct through the first nuclear age with limited scientific knowledge, precedents & awareness being available and/or lack of proactive & preventive efforts to minimize impact owing to the paramount need to maintain secrecy. Prominent examples of it were:- 1. limited awareness of the EMP effects created on Earth by nuclear detonations in outer space as demonstrated effectively via Op Argus in 1958, Op Starfish Prime in 1962 and the Soviet K3 nuclear test of 1962 which destroyed a power generation plant in today’s Kazakhstan, 2. establishment of the U.S. nuclear testing site in Nevada desert on the West coast despite meteorological warnings which ultimately led to spread of radioactive fallout across the entire nation over the subsequent decades and 3. the reckless approach to Castle Bravo detonation of 1954, wherein, the explosive yield of the detonated thermonuclear device actually took the scientists and test planners by surprise as it surpassed the expected yield by more than 2.5 times (at 15 megatons) owing to limited scientific awareness at the time about the effect of Lithium-7, used as Lithium Deuteride, which was incorrectly perceived as inert, in the fusion fuel.Ultimately, the first nuclear age, came at a staggering financial, human & environmental cost to mankind, especially in the Global South; as the U.S. nuclear weapons program alone is estimated to have cost a whopping $5.7 trillion to the exchequer over the span of half-a-century, from 1941 to 1991, while causing prolonged and serious damage to the environment as well as human settlements, courtesy radioactivity and very long half-lives of most radioactive elements, which far surpasses the relatively feeble & ephemeral human existence on Earth...
