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1. Trinity site
 
2. Trinity [Atomic Test] Site by
3. Survival City: Adventures among

1. Trinity site
by National Atomic Museum (U.S.)
Kindle Edition: Pages (2010-10-01)
list price: US$0.99
Asin: B0045OUKBQ
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Editorial Review

Product Description
pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. On Monday morning July 16, 1945, the world was changed forever when the first atomic bomb was tested in an isolated area of the New Mexico desert. Conducted in the final month of World War II by the top-secret Manhattan Engineer District, this test was code named Trinity. The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, about 230 miles south of the Manhattan Project's headquarters at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Today this 3, 2 ... Read more


2. Trinity [Atomic Test] Site by the National Atomic Museum [Kindle Edition]
by National Atomic Museum
 Kindle Edition: Pages (2010-07-03)
list price: US$2.00
Asin: B003UNLNHS
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Editorial Review

Product Description
Trinity [Atomic Test] Site by the National Atomic Museum


TRINITY SITE
by the U.S. Department of Energy
National Atomic Museum,
Albuquerque, New Mexico



Contents:
The First Atomic Test.
Jumbo.
Schmidt-McDonald Ranch House.
Notes.
Bibliography.
The National Atomic Museum.



The First Atomic Test


On Monday morning July 16, 1945, the world was changed forever when
the first atomic bomb was tested in an isolated area of the New Mexico
desert.Conducted in the final month of World War II by the top-
secret Manhattan Engineer District, this test was code named Trinity.
The Trinity test took place on the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery
Range, about 230 miles south of the Manhattan Project's headquarters
at Los Alamos, New Mexico.Today this 3,200 square mile range, partly
located in the desolate Jornada del Muerto Valley, is named the White
Sands Missile Range and is actively used for non-nuclear weapons
testing.

Before the war the range was mostly public and private grazing land
that had always been sparsely populated.During the war it was even
more lonely and deserted because the ranchers had agreed to vacate
their homes in January 1942.They left because the War Department
wanted the land to use as an artillery and bombing practice area.In
September 1944, a remote 18 by 24 square mile portion of the north-
east corner of the Bombing Range was set aside for the Manhattan
Project and the Trinity test by the military.

The selection of this remote location in the Jornada del Muerto Valley
for the Trinity test was from an initial list of eight possible test
sites.Besides the Jornada, three of the other seven sites were also
located in New Mexico: the Tularosa Basin near Alamogordo, the lava
beds (now the El Malpais National Monument) south of Grants, and an
area southwest of Cuba and north of Thoreau.Other possible sites not
located in New Mexico were: an Army training area north of Blythe,
California, in the Mojave Desert; San Nicolas Island (one of the
Channel Islands) off the coast of Southern California; and on Padre
Island south of Corpus Christi, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico.The
last choice for the test was in the beautiful San Luis Valley of south-
central Colorado, near today's Great Sand Dunes National Monument.

Based on a number of criteria that included availability, distance
from Los Alamos, good weather, few or no settlements, and that no
Indian land would be used, the choices for the test site were narrowed
down to two in the summer of 1944.First choice was the military
training area in southern California.The second choice, was the
Jornada del Muerto Valley in New Mexico.The final site selection was
made in late August 1944 by Major General Leslie R. Groves, the
military head of the Manhattan Project.When General Groves
discovered that in order to use the California location he would need
the permission of its commander, General George Patton, Groves quickly
decided on the second choice, the Jornada del Muerto.This was
because General Groves did not want anything to do with the flamboyant
Patton, who Groves had once described as "the most disagreeable man I
had ever met."[1]Despite being second choice the remote Jornada was
a good location for the test, because it provided isolation for
secrecy and safety, was only 230 miles south of Los Alamos, and was
already under military control.Plus, the Jornada enjoyed relatively
good weather.

The history of the Jornada is in itself quite fascinating, since it
was given its name by the Spanish conquerors of New Mexico.The
Jornada was a short cut on the Camino Real, the King's Highway that
linked old Mexico to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico.The Camino
Real went north from Mexico City till it joined the Rio Grande near
present day El Paso, Texas.Then the trail followed the river valley
further north to a point where the river curved to the west, and its
valley narrowed and became impassable for the supply wagons. ... Read more


3. Survival City: Adventures among the Ruins of Atomic America
by Tom Vanderbilt
Kindle Edition: 240 Pages (2010-04-15)
list price: US$17.00
Asin: B0041OTAAW
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France | Japan
Editorial Review

Product Description

On the road to Survival City, Tom Vanderbilt maps the visible and invisible legacies of the cold war, exhuming the blueprints for the apocalypse we once envisioned and chronicling a time when we all lived at ground zero. In this road trip among ruined missile silos, atomic storage bunkers, and secret test sites, a lost battleground emerges amid the architecture of the 1950s, accompanied by Walter Cotten’s stunning photographs. Survival City looks deep into the national soul, unearthing the dreams and fears that drove us during the latter half of the twentieth century.

“A crucial and dazzling book, masterful, and for me at least, intoxicating.”—Dave Eggers

“A genuinely engaging book, perhaps because [Vanderbilt] is skillful at conveying his own sense of engagement to the reader.”—Los Angeles Times

“A retracing of Dr. Strangelove as ordinary life.”—Greil Marcus, Bookforum

... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

2-0 out of 5 stars Should have been Named How to Build a Building
A terrible book. I thought I was reading a book on Architecture and how to build buildings and or cities. The only adventures this author saw was looking out of a window or walking around some ruins that he was trying to make exciting and the only things that kept us out of the Atomic War. This was not an adventure, but a boring trip down a college Architectural course.

4-0 out of 5 stars Great Book For The Cold War History Buff
The "Ruins" of the Cold War are fading fast.Time, weather, and man's inattention to preserving history are everyday factors leading to the eventual disappearance of the relics of the cold war infastructure.Survival City is a facinating look at some of these relics and how and why they were developed.It is a very interesting journey and I really enjoyed reading this book because like the author, I too enjoy looking for, and finding these cold war artifacts.Thank you for a facinating and interesting journey into Atomic America.

4-0 out of 5 stars contemplating the mysteries
In 1969, shortly after the Atlas ICBM program was shut down, I was a college freshman filled with curiosity who more eagerly explored every silo location near the town where I went to school than I did the subjects in my classes. Inactive for such a short time, they were likely to be in pristine condition if only I could find one that was open. Flooded entrances, welded doors and no trespassing signs usually greeted me so how exciting it was when I finally found one that was wide open and with operating electricity! Someone appeared to live there who, probably fortunately, wasn't home. Unlike so many who followed me and vandalized these places, my policy was look but don't touch and leave everything as you found it.

It was with familiarity, then, that I read Vanderbilt's account of his own descent into an Atlas site of exactly the same design.

Like Vanderbilt, I was always fascinated with the old silos, Nike sites, weapons plants and other military detritus that spoke of great power, huge expense and top security now turned to open ruins left to rot, yet telling a story for the amateur detective to interpret. To think that these crumbling places might have meant The End and that what was now casual climbing might once have meant setting off alarms and being shot by an armed guard.

Vanderbilt's book is not a dry description of the specifications of such ruins (though he does seem to be fond of mentioning the number of inches of thickness of reinforced concrete) but a lively account that puts them in place among the ideas and technologies of the Cold War period. Unlike my often clueless speculations on visits to some of the sites, this author has educated himself and brings along others who can expand his knowledge and ours. For me, it's like a dream come true - to visit the places and have along with you knowledgeable company to answer your questions. This investigation is impressively thorough and filled with the detail that his more recent book, Traffic, also shows. Unlike Traffic, the information provided in Survival City would otherwise be far more difficult to come by. He takes his subject and squeezes it for all the juice it can provide. The pictures are an added treat and illustrate the often stark quality one finds in these places.

This book gives voice to otherwise mute monuments of man's power to destroy and in Vanderbilt's writing they are quite conversational. Survival City will never come close to Traffic in popularity but I think it's a much better book both for the depth of thought that the author shares with his readers and the compelling nature of the subject.

4-0 out of 5 stars The fading ruins among us
Author Tom Vanderbilt takes us around the country examining the evidences left by the Cold War, a war which did and yet didn't happen.From missile silos being destroyed to ones being turned into homes, from "proving grounds" to backyard bomb shelters, Mr. Vanderbilt uncovers sites which often sit right in front of us and simply blend into our landscape in spite of their obviously militaristic features.But he goes beyond the aging and disappearing signs indicating "fallout shelters" and discusses how the threat of nuclear annihilation shaped our cities and our thinking.Cities became the targets, and today's suburbs, often denigrated under the label of "urban sprawl," were a reaction to and a defense against the calamities which befell the densely packed cities of Germany and Japan which proved so fatal during the firebombing raids of WWII.Attempts to fortify buildings, strategies for minimizing casualties, underground cities, interstate highways, early warning systems, NORAD, massive retaliation... it all walks a fine line between critical and absurd, interesting and boring.

I can't help imagining the puzzlement the younger generation must feel at seeing some of these things.Growing up in the 70s and 80s I only saw the end of the Cold War, but the Reagan years witnessed an increase in tensions with the USSR (do younger people even know who that was or what it stood for?) and I recall some events like the local opposition which prevented the deployment of MX missiles in the Utah desert in the late 70s.It also reminded me of movies I saw as a teenager like "War Games" and "The Day After," or music by Sting ("Russians") or Frankie Goes To Hollywood ("Two Tribes") which reflected the contradictions of a peace maintained by the ability of two nations to assure "mutual destruction" of each other within minutes.And yet that seemed to be the reality of the world we lived in, and I thought this book captured that sense very well.Mr. Vanderbilt ends with some sobering observations on how September 11th relates to this struggle to protect ourselves without falling into a "bunker mentality."Overall, an interesting and reflective look at a fading time, a look at the darker side of the optimism and technological advances of the 50s and 60s, with lots of great pictures (all in stark b&w) although maybe not quite 4 stars.

5-0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Storyteller Explores the Cold War
Tom Vanderbilt's book is not only factual, but provides a riveting adventure through the remnants of America's Cold War.His writing is compelling. What he reveals is astonishing, and the pictures placed through out the book give the story crucial details that portray the reality of the Cold War in a way that words simply cannot articulate.The book draws you in and changes your perspective on and knowledge of history as well as the residue that coats America today. ... Read more


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