Starting From Scratch at Ground Zero

Joseph C. Dovala · Issue 65, Mar/Apr 2012 · pp. 62–65

July 1, 1946 – “One man feared gravity would be destroyed and everything would fall up. Another prophesied that when the atomic bomb wet off at Bikini, all the water in all the oceans would be turned to gas, automatically dropping ships to the bottom. Another thought the Operation Crossroads bomb would blow a hole in the bottom of the Bikini lagoon and let all the water in the sea run out…” Such were just a few of the predictions published in Newsweek Magazine immediately prior to the atomic testing that took place in the Marshall Islands in 1946. To be sure, our ignorance of “controlled” nuclear fission was staggering. The unknowns outweighed any meager knowledge we had at the time. Even today Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and very recently, Fukushima, are evidence we still have a lot to learn. There is much speculation as to why we further needed to test the new terrifying weapons so s…