{"id":146883,"date":"2024-12-27T15:36:07","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T22:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=146883"},"modified":"2024-12-27T15:36:07","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T22:36:07","slug":"7-surprising-facts-about-the-nuclear-bomb-tests-at-bikini-atoll-of-earthquakes-tsunamis-and-weather-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/12\/27\/7-surprising-facts-about-the-nuclear-bomb-tests-at-bikini-atoll-of-earthquakes-tsunamis-and-weather-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Surprising Facts about the Nuclear Bomb Tests at Bikini Atoll: Of Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Weather Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Patrick J. Kiger Courtesy History.com<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. There is a long history of research experiments to generate earthquakes, tsunamis and climate disasters. As Partick J. Kiger wrote Between 1946 and 1958 the United States detonated 23 nuclear weapons on the tiny, remote ring of islands that make up Bikini Atoll. Marshal Islands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(History Com: https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/nuclear-bomb-tests-bikini-atoll-facts<\/a> )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.history.com\/news\/nuclear-bomb-tests-bikini-atoll-facts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, twenty years later the Indian Ocean World commemorate the massive 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami Boxing Day or Christmas day disaster — depending on which time zone one lived in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2004 was the year that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), expressions of concerns about China\u2019s String of Pearls\u201d across the Indian Ocean, including Sri Lanka\u2019s Hambantota port reached a crescendo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On December 26, 2004 huge explosions were heard in Banda Aceh on the coast of North Sumatra and Nias Islands, Indonesia, which became Ground Zero just before the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis hit and killed and injured hundreds of thousands. The BLACK waters of the Tsunamis then hit Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and the east coast of Africa devastating coastal communities and fisheries livelihoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the disaster the World Economic Forum (WEF) mantra Build Back Better\u201d was promoted by President Bill Clinton along with what Naomi Klein termed Disaster Capitalism\u201d in her book titled: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism\u201d. Klein visiting Sri Lanka and other stricken countries. Many valuable Indian Ocean coastal lands were grabbed by \u2018investors\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the wisdom of hindsight and new information, as a new Cold War escalates across Asia and the Indian Ocean it may be possible to connect some dots to the Tsunami tragedy of 2004- twenty years ago this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By: Patrick J. Kiger<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published: May 12, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"hugeUniversal History Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November 1945, just a few months after atomic bombs were dropped<\/a> on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end<\/a> of World War II<\/a>, U.S. military leaders began planning additional nuclear weapons tests. The first location that they picked to stage a blast was a remote place that probably few Americans even knew existed. Bikini Atoll, a tiny ring of small coral islands with a total land mass of only about two square miles<\/a>, was part of the larger Marshall Islands chain in the central Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bikini atoll met the military\u2019s criteria, as detailed in a report<\/a> by the Natural Resources Defense Council. It was under U.S. control, and it was far from shipping lanes, yet within 1,000 miles of a base from which bombers could take off. Furthermore, the lagoon that the atoll encircled provided a protected harbor for Navy ships, including vessels that would be used as targets. And it had only a tiny population\u2014by one account, just 167 people<\/a>\u2014who could be relocated by the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February 1946, Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, military governor of the Marshall Islands, went to Bikini Atoll and met with an assembly of residents to break the news that they had to leave, at least temporarily. According to Jack Niedenthal\u2019s 2001 history of the Bikini Atoll, For the Good of Mankind,<\/em><\/a> <\/em>Wyatt told them the tests were necessary to prevent future wars. The residents reacted with confusion and sadness. Finally, their leader, King Juda, stood up and announced, We will go, believing that everything is in the hands of God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The small atoll would soon become one of the most famous places on the planet, such a recognizable name that a French designer named a swimsuit<\/a> after it. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 23 nuclear devices<\/a> at Bikini Atoll, including 20 hydrogen bombs<\/a>. Among those was the March 1, 1954 Castle Bravo H-bomb test, which reached a yield of 15 megatons, 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some seven facts about the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The First Atomic bomb dropped at Bikini Atoll Missed the Target<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A mushroom cloud seen from Eneu Island, resulting from an atomic explosion of “Able” during Operation Crossroads, July 1, 1946.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The atoll was picked as the location for Operation Crossroads<\/a>, a program to investigate the effects of nuclear blasts on Navy vessels. On July 1, 1946, Test Able was staged. A target fleet of 95 ships was positioned in Bikini Atoll\u2019s lagoon, with laboratory animals\u2014pigs, goats and mice\u2014on board so that scientists could study the potential effects of radiation on ship crews. A support fleet of another 150 ships withdrew to a position 10 nautical miles from the Atoll, and waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 9 a.m., a B-29 bomber flew over the lagoon and dropped an atomic bomb, which exploded 520 feet from the surface and missed the target ship in the middle of the lagoon by 1,500 to 2,000 feet, according to an account<\/a> from the Atomic Heritage Foundation. The bomb only sunk five of the ships, but the force of the blast and radiation killed about a third of the lab animals<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Go inside the new world of futuristic conventional weaponry – as the world’s most powerful militaries devise new ways to fuse targeted precision with unprecedented punch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WATCH NOW<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The Second Atomic Bomb Test at Bikini Atoll Created a Tsunami<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Galerie Bilderwelt\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Baker test during Operation Crossroads, a series of two nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Test Baker on July 25, 1946, the U.S. military tried a different approach, exploding a bomb 90 feet beneath the water surface of the lagoon. It was the first underwater test of a nuclear weapon, and resulted in all sorts of startling phenomena, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation<\/a>. The blast generated a massive bubble of hot gas that simultaneously expanded downward and upward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the bottom, it carved a 30-foot-deep, 2,000-foot-wide crater in the surface of the sea floor. On the surface, it burst through like a geyser and created an enormous dome of water that eventually reached more than a mile in height. The blast triggered a tsunami with a 94-foot-high wave, so powerful that it lifted up the Arkansas<\/em>, a 27,000-ton ship. The surge of water swept over many of the target ships, coating them with radioactivity. Eight of the ships were sunk, according to a U.S. Navy account<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The Soviets Watched the Tests, But Weren’t Impressed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. allowed international observers at the tests, and Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria<\/a>, who was both head of the Soviet atomic program and chief of the Stalin regime\u2019s secret police, sent a physicist and a geologist, according to Richard Rhodes\u2019 1995 book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, they weren\u2019t impressed. One of the observers Simon Peter Alexandrov, who was in charge of uranium for the Soviet\u2019s own nuclear effort, told a U.S. scientist there that if the purpose of the test was to frighten the Soviets, it hadn\u2019t worked, because the Soviets had bombers that could reach U.S. cities, according to the National Security Archive<\/a>. The Soviet newspaper Pravda<\/em> subsequently criticized the U.S. tests as common blackmail\u201d and said that other than a few obsolete warships, the only thing the United States had blown up was belief in the seriousness of American talk about atomic disarmament.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. A Third Atomic Bomb Test at Bikini Was Called Off<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An aerial view of a target outline on Namu Island of Bikini Atoll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. nuclear weapons program had a problem in 1946, because it didn\u2019t yet have that many bombs. The Able and Baker tests used up two of the only three nuclear cores in the U.S. stockpile, according to Rhodes. Even though production of new bombs soon picked up, the U.S. military remained concerned about squandering resources. Operation Crossroads originally was to have included a third test, Charlie, scheduled for April 1947, in which researchers planned to explode an atomic bomb even deeper in the water. But senior officials at the Manhattan Project<\/a> and the Pentagon<\/a> argued that it had no military value, and that providing another bomb would hinder the efforts to produce a lighter and smaller atomic weapon, according to the National Security Archive\u2019s account. The test was postponed and eventually canceled. Officials apparently were also unhappy with the atoll\u2019s lack of land to create a support base and the inability to build an airstrip there. After the 1946 tests, Bikini Atoll wasn\u2019t used again as a site until 1954, when the U.S. began to test hydrogen bombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. A Hydrogen Bomb Test Produced a Bigger Blast Than Planned<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Asahi Shimbun\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crew members of a Japanese tuna fishing boat attend a press conference at the Tokyo University Hospital on March 16, 1954. All 23 crew members were exposed to nuclear fallout from the U.S. Castle Bravo nuclear test while fishing tuna near Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Island on March 1, 1954.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bravo test wasn\u2019t the first H-bomb that the US. detonated\u2014that distinction belonged to Ivy Mike<\/a>, a device exploded in November 1952 in the Enewak Atoll<\/a> in the Marshall Islands. But it was the first thermonuclear weapon that was small enough to be utilized as a weapon. While its designers had achieved a technological first, they also made a critical mistake, by drastically underestimating the size of the yield that would be created by its fusion fuel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the 23,500-pound device was detonated on March 1, 1954, it produced a 15-megaton blast\u2014three times as big as planned, according to a Brookings Institution report<\/a>. The explosion was so powerful that it vaporized three of the islands in the atoll, and tore a mile-wide crater in the bottom of the lagoon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanford University biology professor Stephen Palumbi,<\/a> who visited the atoll in 2017 as part of a TV documentary, estimated that the bomb blast hurled debris in the air that was the equivalent of 216 Empire State Building<\/a>s, according to Stanford Magazine<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The radioactive debris spewed by the blast contaminated 23 crew members aboard a Japanese fishing boat located 80 miles away, as well as residents of Rongelap and Utirik atolls<\/a>. Kuboyama Aikichi, a crew member from the Japanese boat died six months later at age 40. Japanese physicians who performed an autopsy on Aikichi cited radiation sickness as the cause of death, although that determination<\/a> remained disputed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. H-Bombs Tested at Bikini in the 1950s Had Odd Nicknames<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bravo test\u2019s nuclear device was nicknamed Shrimp,\u201d even though it weighed 23,500 pounds. The Romeo test, conducted a few weeks after Bravo, used an even bigger bomb dubbed Runt I.\u201d Other bombs had nicknames such as Morgenstern\u201d and Alarm Clock,\u201d according to the NRDC report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. The Bikini Atoll Still Isn\u2019t Fit for Habitation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents of Bikini Atoll carrying their belongings down to the beach as they prepare to evacuate the atoll. In 1946 the atoll’s population was moved to Rongerik Atoll, 109 miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Bikini Atoll\u2019s inhabitants were relocated in 1946, it was promised that they eventually could return. Instead, they were relocated to other islands in the Marshalls. Starting in the late 1960s, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission declared Bikini Atoll finally to be safe again for human habitation, and allowed some former residents to return. But that experiment was cut short a decade later, when a study showed that the levels of Cesium-137<\/a> in returnees\u2019 bodies had increased by 75 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bikini inhabitants were relocated once again, this time to Kili Island, 450 miles away. Scientists say it\u2019s still not safe to return. Probably the most robust finding from our research is that Bikini Island must be cleaned up if people are to live there again,\u201d says Ivana Nikolic Hughes<\/a>, a senior lecturer in chemistry at Columbia University and Director of the K-1 Project Center for Nuclear Studies<\/a> This is based on levels of Cesium-137<\/a> in the food, background gamma radiation, and presence of various isotopes in soil and ocean sediment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010, UNESCO declared Bikini Atoll a World Heritage Site<\/a> as a reminder of the fearsome power of nuclear weapons and their influence on modern civilization. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Patrick J. Kiger Courtesy History.com Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. There is a long history of research experiments to generate earthquakes, tsunamis and climate disasters. As Partick J. Kiger wrote Between 1946 and 1958 the United States detonated 23 nuclear weapons on the tiny, remote ring of islands that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}