Timeline
Testing Begins in Nevada
In order to develop and improve the technology, the Manhattan Project needed a testing ground. Vast expanses of desert land in Nevada were chosen for their low human and biological population, as well as for their size and the sheltering mountains surrounding them, and "From 1950 until all U.S. testing ceased in 1992, the NTS was the major proving ground for nuclear weapons, carrying out 928 of 1,054 detonations" (Sonya Padgett, Atomic Legacy). As part of the research, thousands of American soldiers were brought in from all around the country to watch the explosions up close. The soldiers were instructed to lay in bunkers during the first couple of seconds, and once the area was “clear”, they were allowed to get up, admire, and even move closer to the mushroom cloud in order to get a better look. Despite the occasional burns, skin lesions, and illnesses that arose, the generals and the scientists insisted that the soldiers were safe, and that only the initial explosion were dangerous. Few people knew of the radioactive particles that fell to the earth immediately after each test, and the even more hazardous materials being carried through the jet stream and deposited all around the continent.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombs
World War II officially came to an end just days after Japan became the first country to ever be attacked by nuclear weapons. Authorized by President Harry Truman, both bombs combined killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens and soldiers, and almost half of each city was turned to rubble. Japan was in complete turmoil. According to Rodney Barker in Excerpt from the Hiroshima Maidens, "The tragedy at Hiroshima killed between seventy thousand and eighty thousand people instantly. Over the next five years, thousands more people (about half the city's population) would die from the aftereffects of the bombing." Foreign Minister Manoru Shigemitsu signed a surrender document three days after the assault on Nagasaki. While the devastation caused by the bombs was widely known, a shocking 85 percent of the American public supported the actions of the government.
Creation of the Hydrogen Bomb
For four years, the U.S. was the only country on the planet possessing atomic weapons. This changed, however, when Russia detonated their first fission bomb on August 29, 1949, codenamed "First Lightning" (Richard Lee Miller, Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing). It happened to be an exact copy of the American bombs because the Soviet Union had spies on the inside of the Manhattan Project, the secret government organization that was responsible for the development of nuclear weapons. Unsatisfied with the fact that someone had caught up, America began looking for yet another way to one-up their greatest enemies. There had already been a debate within the scientific community whether or not to develop the hydrogen bomb, a weapon that in theory would be much more powerful than the present technology. One of the scientists who was involved with the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commision, Dr. Edward Teller, supported these views. A passionate anti-communist Hungarian emigré, Teller’s bitterness towards the Soviet Union was a product of their domination of his home country after World War II. The secret committee spent three years and millions of taxpayer’s dollars researching and creating the behemoth bomb. Then, on the first of November, 1952, the Americans exploded the first massive weapon of its kind in the Eniwetok Atoll, and Teller became known as the “Father of the Hydrogen Bomb”.