The remains of Armageddon: Revisiting the sites of America’s atomic arsenal

[AdamSmith]

The remains of Armageddon: Revisiting the sites of America's atomic arsenal
By Nicole Crowder June 18 The Washington Post


The Mosler bank vault, built to determine the effects of nuclear weapons on civil structures, survived a 37-kiloton blast in 1957 at the Nevada National Security Site. After the explosion workers removed the vaults door and discovered that the simulated currency inside was undamaged. (Jim Lo Scalzo)



The remains of Hanford High School, which will become part of the upcoming Manhattan Project National Historical Park, are seen at the Hanford Site in Hanford, Wash. The site was used to make plutonium for nuclear weapons and is now one of the most toxic nuclear sites in the Western Hemisphere. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)
Sprinkled throughout the back roads of America are the remains of Armageddon. Or what could have been Armageddon had the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union suddenly gone hot.
In the coming months, the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of Energy will establish the Manhattan Project National Historical Park preserving once-secret sites in Los Alamos, N.M., Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash., where scientists raced to develop the worlds first atomic bomb. Public tours at these sites are already intensely popular, selling out within days. The Park Service is trying to improve access to these sites to meet the increasing public interest. Veteran photojournalist Jim Lo Scalzo of European Press Agency has been documenting many of these sitehidden in plain sitefor the past year in a project titled Next Exit: Armageddon.
Yet elsewhere in the United States, the ruins of the Manhattan Project, and the arms race that followed, remain overlooked. In North Dakota, pyramid-like anti-missile radar, built to detect an incoming nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, pokes through the prairie grass behind an open fence. In Arizona, a satellite calibration target used during the Cold War to help U.S. satellites focus their lenses before spying on the Soviet Union sits covered in weeds near a Motel 6 parking lot. In South Dakota, decommissioned nuclear missiles still aim skyward; in Nevada and New Mexico, the remains of nuclear testing still scar the desert. And in a suburban Chicago park, where visitors jog and bird watch, nuclear waste from the worlds first reactor developed by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi for the Manhattan Project in 1942 sits buried beneath a sign that reads CautionDo Not Dig.
From Next Exit: Armageddon by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA



Two rocket fuel handler outfits, which were worn by propellant transfer system technicians, are displayed at the Titan Missile Museum, which preserves a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile, in Sahuarita, Ariz., in April. (Jim Lo Scalzo)



The control room of the X-10 graphite reactor, the worlds second reactor after Enrico Fermis so-called Chicago Pile, is seen at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Built in secret during the Manhattan Project, the reactor supplied plutonium to nuclear scientists working at Los Alamos. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



The loading face of the X-10 graphite reactor is seen through the window of the control room at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



Tourists are seen in a long-exposure image visiting Trinity Test Site, where on July 16, 1945, scientists working with the Manhattan Project detonated the worlds first atomic bomb, on White Sands Missile Range just outside San Antonio, N.M. The Department of Defense allows the public to visit the site on just two days a year. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



A decommissioned Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile sits in an underground silo at the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Ariz., in April. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



The room that would have served as the House of Representatives in the event of a nuclear war is seen in a once-secret nuclear bunker built for members of Congress beneath the Greenbrier, a four-star resort near White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The 112,544-square-foot bomb shelter included enough beds and supplies to accommodate all the lawmakers. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



Decontamination showers inside a once-secret nuclear bunker built for members of Congress are seen beneath the Greenbrier. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



The assistant launch control officers station is seen at the Delta 01-Launch Control Facility, the former control center of a Minuteman missile, just outside Wall, S.D., in March. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



A pressure monitor panel is among some of the vintage switches and indicators inside the main control room of Hanfords historic B Reactor, the worlds first, full-scale nuclear reactor, on the Hanford Site in Washington state in May. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



The atomic cloud logo of the Richland High School Bombers, which reflects the pride in the Richland area for the communitys role in the development of the Manhattan Project and the end of WW II, decorates the floor of the high schools gymnasium in Richland, Wash. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



Tourists walk through a blast door at the Delta 01-Launch Control Facility, the former control center of a Minuteman missile, just outside Wall, S.D. After the missile site was deactivated in 1994, the National Park Service turned the facility into the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



The remains of a pyramid-like anti-missile radar, part of the the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex, which was completed in 1975 during the Cold War to detect an incoming nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, are seen just outside Nekoma, N.D. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)



The world's first, full-scale nuclear reactor, the historic B Reactor, is seen from the window of a bus tour on the Hanford Site in Washington state in May. (Jim Lo Scalzo)



Western wheatgrass has grown in and around the former launch site of a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile just outside Wall, S.D., in March. All that remains of the launch facility is a barbed-wire fence around an empty field. (Jim LoScalzo/EPA)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2015/06/18/the-remains-of-armageddon-revisiting-the-sites-of-americas-atomic-arsenal/

[RA1]

So, are you suggesting that the US and the world can indeed survive a "limited" nuclear war or attack?

It would not be fun but I think we can survive.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

The sharks and cockroaches, certainly. Whom I would bet on to outlast us in any event.

[RA1]

The sharks are in trouble ever since "we" discovered that they are tasty. Heaven help the cockroaches should we discover anything similar.

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

Heaven help the cockroaches should we discover anything similar.

Well, I don't know much about how cocker-roaches might taste but they look nasty as hell if you squish them.

[RA1]

I freely admit that no matter how tasty, getting past the visual image of same would be daunting.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

You can tour the Hanford B reactor!

http://manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov

...think I'll save my allowable millirads for dental x-rays &tc.

[AdamSmith]

Einstein's letter telling FDR to get cracking on making a Bomb:

http://manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov/files.cfm/AlbertEinstein.pdf

[MsAnn]

Do you have a link to the Einstein letter that is not a pdf? It downloads but will not open.

[AdamSmith]

The nerve of it! Hmmph.

Here's one:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-ein39/

[MsAnn]

The nerve of it! Hmmph.

Here's one:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-ein39/

Amazing....

[RA1]

I suppose they send in a canary with a Geiger counter before the opening of the "tour season" at Hanford?

The letter from Einstein to FDR seems too informal for the time but it does seem to be authentic.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

One can hope they have Hanford safe but I'm happy to be 2000 miles away,

That's the Einstein letter text all right. You can see the original typewritten document in the PDF I first linked above.

Re: formality, this was the tone of many such letters and memos I read in the various histories of the bomb and of WII-era doings in general. Interesting how contemporary it all feels. Suggests that ca. 1940 was the beginning of our own era in many ways.

[MsAnn]

"Did you hear that?"

"Not a thing to worry about dear, we're perfectly safe"

[AdamSmith]

But for all that, I do have, sealed under a glass dome here on my desk, a small piece of Trinitite -- the glassy green fused sand of the Alamagordo desert floor, created in the 'Trinity' test explosion of the first atomic bomb, July 16, 1945.

A former business colleague who is a physicist assures me it is now safe, this long after the event. Though he suggests not ingesting it.

[RA1]

I would have thought Trinitite was a threesome all fairly new to gay sex.

I well remember bomb shelter plans being widely available. We all worried but did little. However, I did note that the local school that I attended did have the basement designated as a bomb shelter as did many public buildings. The old terminal at MEM was so designated and I certainly considered adjourning there during any tornado alerts or warnings when I was at the airport or nearby. The walls were 3 feet thick and full of rebar + there is an extensive basement.

Best regards,

RA1

[AdamSmith]

Downtown Raleigh likewise had those yellow-and-black nuke-shelter signs on a lot of the government buildings especially. But walking around observing at child height, I couldn't help wondering what use it would be, as most of those basements had the little sidewalk-well windows that would shatter in a blast and let the fallout right in.

At least I came along a little bit after they stopped showing the duck-and-cover films to elementary shoolchildren.

[RA1]

As per the old joke about what to do in the case of nuclear attack. Get under your desk, bend over and kiss your ass good-bye.

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

A former business colleague who is a physicist assures me it is now safe, this long after the event. Though he suggests not ingesting it.

Or, at a minimum, not excreting it.

[MsAnn]

Or, at a minimum, not excreting it.

Here we go.... It was only a matter of time

Poor poor Albert, all his good intentions are gone to the shitter.

[AdamSmith]

Here we go.... It was only a matter of time

Poor poor Albert, all his good intentions are gone to the shitter.

[AdamSmith]