20th Century Atomic Secrets: Nuclear Testing at the Nevada Test Site, Nuclear Weapons Test Film Clips, Images, and Documents (Two CD-ROM Set)

This fully updated electronic book on two CD-ROMs provides a complete guide to the historic series of atomic bomb tests conducted by the United States, with over 240 video clips, 1180 image files, and thousands of pages of documents reproduced in Adobe Acrobat format. There is extensive material on testing at the Nevada Test Site, along with information on the history of the NTS.

The Department of Energy, in cooperation with the Department of Defense, declassified a series of historical films on the nuclear weapons program. These films document the history of the development of nuclear weapons, starting with the first bomb tested at Trinity Site in southeastern New Mexico in July 1945. This is the first time the films have ever been edited for declassification and public release. (Portions of some of these films were previously released.) Included in the short film clips: the first hydrogen bomb test known as Mike in 1952; the Bravo shot in 1954 which surprised officials with its historic 15 megaton yield and produced unexpected fallout; Operation Argus which exploded small bombs 300 miles over the south Atlantic; Plowshare blasts to test the use of nuclear bombs in excavation projects; nuclear effects at sea; various Air Force delivery systems; and amazing artificial aurora produced by Pacific high-altitude blasts. In addition to the movie clips, there are hundreds of image files, in the JPG format, with still photographs of the various nuclear tests, along with documentary photography of the Nevada Test Site.

The movie clips are in the standard MPG and WMV formats. The documents are reproduced using Adobe Acrobat PDF software - allowing direct viewing on Windows and Apple Macintosh systems.

Documents in the collection in this set include:

· Nevada Test Site Guide
· U.S. Nuclear Tests July 1945 – 1992
· Manhattan Project and the Nevada Test Site
· Manhattan Engineer District – Project Chronology
· Origins of the Nevada Test Site
· Containment of Underground Nuclear Explosions
· Yield Classification
· Radiological Effluents Released from Test 1961 – 1992
· Radiological Emergency Response Health and Safety Manual
· Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC) Monitoring Manual

Coming out of World War II, the U.S. and its allies realized they were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. The first atomic bomb had been tested successfully at the Trinity Site in southeastern New Mexico in July 1945 and the second and third bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, bringing about a speedy end to World War II. U.S. officials knew that the Soviet Union was on a fast track to develop the "bomb" and that they must develop more sophisticated nuclear weapons to stay ahead of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. With the backing of the Executive Branch and Congress, the Army's Manhattan Engineer District (MED), which designed, developed and tested the first atomic bomb, embarked on a nuclear testing program in 1946 at the newly established Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshall Islands area. The MED was dissolved in 1947 and its duties and functions were given to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The DoD joined the AEC in Joint Task Forces which continued the atmospheric testing program. This program allowed rapid gains in knowledge about weapons development, military effects, fallout and radiation effects, biomedical science, nuclear science, and delivery systems. AL, a field office of the AEC, opened the Nevada Proving Ground northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1951 to reduce the cost of nuclear testing. The cost of transporting supplies, scientific gear, and materials for housing and testing, and for keeping a work force in the Pacific was monumental. The name of the Nevada Proving Ground was changed in 1957 to the Nevada Test Site. In hindsight, the AEC and the DoD made many mistakes in the testing program, such as underestimating the effects of fallout and deploying