Scientists warned of dangers to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the director of the bomb project, General Leslie R. Groves, ruled that residents should not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (even after they were sure to spot a blast brighter than any sun before dawn on July 16). Nothing was to interfere with the test.
While many people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test, on July 16, 1945. This forms the dramatic center of Christopher Nolan’s new Oppenheimer epic, coming to theaters on July 21. That has been true, in fact, about every movie about the making and use of the first atomic bomb, going back to the very first film in 1947.
The successful detonation put President Truman on the path to using the horrendous new weapon, twice, against Japanese cities, killing at least 170,000 civilians and others. Much less attention has been directed at how the aftermath of the test lay the groundwork for the age that would follow: the cover-up of radiation effects on Americans (workers, soldiers and others) and government obsession with secrecy, soon extending to all military and foreign affairs in the Cold War era, with many negative effects….
After the truth-shower 