In the New Mexico desert before dawn, a small group of scientists counted down to something the world had never seen.

Darkness Before Dawn

At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the desert area near Alamogordo, New Mexico, did not have natural light. In concrete bunkers located multiple miles from the center, scientists observed the darkness while they wore protective gear over their eyes. For multiple years, the individuals who worked on the Manhattan Project lived apart from society because they wanted to construct a weapon to finish World War II. As the countdown reached zero, the observers did not have certain knowledge of the result. Some feared the test would fail; others were concerned that the reaction might cause atmospheric changes.

A Flash Brighter Than the Sun

By the end of the countdown, the darkness ended - on the ground, a flash of light appeared that had more intensity than the sun and covered the surrounding area. To the observers a steel tower with a height of 100 feet was no longer visible because it vaporized. Due to the high temperature, the sand on the desert floor melted and became a green substance with a texture like glass, which is known as trinitite. When the explosion occurred, it produced energy equal to 18.6 kilotons of TNT. And because people saw or felt the event across a large region, the government issued a report stating that an ammunition storage building located in a far area had exploded.

In the bunkers the people who were present showed both technical and personal responses. By dropping small pieces of paper, Enrico Fermi calculated the power of the explosion. With enthusiasm some of the younger scientists shouted and held one another - but the period of noise soon stopped and became a state where no one spoke.

"Now We Are All Sons of Bitches"

By the end of the test, the individuals who developed the device understood that they had reached a point from which they could not return. Kenneth Bainbridge, who directed the test, stated at the time that "Now we are all sons of bitches". As he watched the fireball ascend, Oppenheimer remembered a specific passage from the Bhagavad Gita which states that "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds". In a different account at a later date, he provided a more complete description of the event when he said that "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent".

It is a fact that the risky experiment was successful and the state of the world was different. For multiple weeks, the conflict continued until a plutonium implosion bomb with the same fundamental design was released over Nagasaki - this occurred after the uranium bomb was released over Hiroshima and those actions were factors that compelled Japan to surrender. Due to the events of that morning, Oppenheimer spent his remaining years in a state of conflict regarding his actions. On one hand he felt satisfaction because the scientific goals were met but on the other hand, he felt persistent distress because of the period of history that began that day.