Time Travel Trip: Part Two

Since I can’t travel through time, I traveled to New Mexico instead - all to do research for my new time travel book. Here’s how it went...

On July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb - nicknamed the gadget - was detonated in New Mexico at the Trinity Site, which is located within the military-run White Sands Missile Range. In 1975 the area was declared a national historic landmark and Trinity Site is now open to the public two days a year.

The primary landmark is ground zero, where a commemorative obelisk stands at the location of the original 100-foot steel tall tower that held the bomb. After the device detonated, the heat melted the sand on the desert floor, creating a green (and radioactive) glassy substance called Trinitite. Most of the Trinitite has been removed or buried, but if you look carefully you can still find small nuggets of the stuff scattered around. A bunker-type structure has been built in order to preserve a small swath of the original bomb crater and its Trinitite covering, which I was actually curious to see. Unfortunately, while it seems that they used to open this structure to public view, it now looks permanently closed - a sign helpfully explains that sand has since covered what remains of the crater surface.


There were a lot of people at this thing. Supposedly they get about a thousand visitors. Besides ground zero, you can also take a bus to the McDonald ranch house, which is where the bomb was assembled. The house wasn't particularly interesting.

What is interesting though, is that a one hour visit to ground zero results in a radiation exposure of one-half to one millirems, which is about ten times greater than the areas normal background radiation (interestingly, the levels are strongest wherever the concentrations of buried Trinitite are the greatest). However, to put this in perspective: a coast to coast flight will actually net you two millirems and a chest x-ray about six. On average, we receive about 360 millirems per year. I guess for 2009 I’ll be a little closer to 361.

Next up: the Chino open-pit copper mine...

The Trinity explosion.