Trinity

Trinity - darkometer rating : 8 - It was here, in the middle of the desert of the White Sands range in southern New Mexico, USA , that the first ever atomic bomb was detonated – in a test that was code-named Trinity. Its fireball and mushroom cloud were the culmination of the Manhattan Project , and the true beginning of the Atomic Age. The power of the atom had successfully been unleashed – and this propelled the US into nuclear superpower status. It immediately proceeded to apply this new power, namely in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki … and the world has never been the same since. Today a small stone monument marks the spot at Trinity's ground zero. As small as it may be, few other spots on Earth can match this one for dark historical weight. Accordingly this is probably the most significant nuclear tourism site in the world, from a purely historical point of view at least. But unfortunately it's only very occasionally accessible to civilian visitors (currently only once a year, on the third Saturday of October). > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: For background info on the development of the bomb see under Manhattan Project , Hanford , and Los Alamos & Bradbury Science Museum and cf. National Nuclear Museum . For more on the effects and ethics of atomic warfare see under Hiroshima and especially Nagasaki . Compare, too, to the Soviet equivalent: the Polygon or Semipalatinsk Test Site (now in Kazakhstan ). Now for the Trinity site itself: by early to mid 1945 the Manhattan Project scientists had reached the point where they were confident enough that their designs for atomic bombs could deliver what they had promised.