Week Seven Ends with a Bang

Well.. a sixty-odd year old bang anyway.

Twice a year the Army opens up the otherwise restricted White Sands Missile Range (motto: "Let us see how much we can really beat the shit out of your invention, before you drop it on somebody!"), to the general public for only six hours.

Every first Saturday in October and April, intrepid tourists have an opportunity to drive into the middle of pretty much nowhere, to visit the original ground zero, i.e. the site of the world's first nuclear detonation.


On July 16, 1945, on top of a 100-foot steel tower, an atomic bomb was detonated. The shockwave was felt over 200 miles away, windows were broken 100 miles away, and the entire tower was vaporized (with the exception of one footing). An eight-foot crater was formed in its place and the immediate rock and dirt turned into the world's first trinitite deposit.

There's not much in the way of destruction to see today. The crater has been filled and the radioactive material buried. After sixty years, the landscape on the surface looks pretty much like the surrounding desert. But, a rock monument now sits in the center of where the tower stood. And a fence keeps us tourists from getting too much additional radiation from the surrounding area. Half-life? Oh, about 10,000 years.


I came, I saw, I took the requisite pictures. I didn’t find myself reflecting on the horrific potential for death and destruction that nuclear weapons represent. However, driving the 15 miles into the missile range was pretty interesting from a popular culture perspective. I mean, there were quite a few turn-offs to a number of what can only be qualified as X-Files type buildings.

I thought about making a run for one of them but then realized that if the truth really is out there, I don't want to know.