Donald Hornig, Last to See First A-Bomb, Dies at 92

[n2doc]

In a small shed at the top of a 100-foot-tall steel tower deep in the New Mexico desert, Donald Hornig sat next to the world’s first atomic bomb in the late evening of July 15, 1945, reading a book of humorous essays. A storm raged, and he shuddered at each lightning flash.


It was his second trip to the tower that day as part of the Manhattan Project, the secret American effort to build an atomic bomb. He had earlier armed the device, code-named Trinity, connecting switches he had designed to the detonators.

But J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, had grown nervous about leaving the bomb alone. He told Dr. Hornig to return to the tower and baby-sit the bomb.

A little after midnight, the weather had improved, and Dr. Hornig was ordered down from the tower. He was the last man to leave and the last to see the weapon before it changed human history.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/science/donald-hornig-a-bomb-scientist-and-brown-president-dies-at-92.html?hpw

[phantom power]

1. It worries me, what will happen when nobody alive remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[bananas]

2. It's already a problem, even here on DU.

There's a lot of denial about nuclear weapons.

[phantom power]

3. I wouldn't wish the kind of fear I grew up with on future generations

but then again, at least the fear operated as a kind of motivator. I think it wouldn't be a terrible idea to include that old(!) movie The Day After as part of a standard HS curriculum. And/or reading Hersey's Hiroshima.