Atoll = a ring-shaped ribbon reef enclosing a lagoon

1. “And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.” • H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (1914) • At end of World War II, George Orwell used “cold war” in his essay “You and the Atomic Bomb” • "For 40 or 50 years past, H.G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over”

2. “Every man, woman, and child lives under the nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at moment by • Accident, or miscalculation or by madness.” • John F. Kennedy

3. “We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” • J. Robert Oppenheimer on the build-up of nuclear weapons, 1953

4. “The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.” • Omar Bradley, World War II general

5. “Only a year ago, the Hydrogen Bomb was exploded in the Pacific. This increase of power from the mere musket and the little cannon all the way to the H-bomb in a single lifetime is indicative of the things that have happened to us. • It indicates how far the advances of science have outraced our social consciousness, how much more we have developed scientifically than we are capable of handling emotionally and intellectually.” • President Eisenhower, 1953

6. Atoll = a ring-shaped ribbon reef enclosing a lagoon Bikini Atoll: from Marshall Island language “Pik” “Ni”, meaning “surface coconut” Bikini Atoll, with Bikini Island boxed in the northeast. The crater formed by the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test can be seen on the northwest cape of the atoll.

7. Between 1946 and 1958, twenty-three nuclear devices were detonated at Bikini Atoll, beginning with the Operations Crossroads.

8. The Bikini • Invented by French engineer Louis Réard  in 1946 • Named it after Bikini Atoll, the site of Operation Crossroads (4th A-bomb) in July `46. • The new, controversial swimwear would create a “burst of excitement like a nuclear device”. • Earlier, French one-piece suit was called “the Atome”; Réard claimed to have "split the Atome"

9. “Baker” - Bikini Atoll A-bomb test, July 1946 – time sequence, including next two pics

12. Castle Bravo • March 1954 detonation codenamed Castle Bravo = 3 years after first test of a hydrogen bomb. Largest nuke explosion ever set off by the U.S. • much more powerful than predicted, and created widespread radioactive contamination • Bravo had an explosive force equal to nearly 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs. It vaporized the test island, parts of two other islands, and left a mile-wide crater in the lagoon floor • extensive radiological contamination of nearby islands (including inhabitants and U.S. soldiers stationed there), as well as a nearby Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon • Caused scandal in Japan and inspired 1964 film Godzilla, a monster who attacks Japan after being awakened and mutated by U.S. bomb test • U.S. gave $150 million as a settlement for damages to the few hundred residents

14. Camp Desert Rock – Troop Test Smokey • May 1953, U.S. detonated A-bomb (nicknamed "Harry") at the Nevada Test Site in Yucca Flats • The bomb later called “Dirty Harry” since winds carried fallout 135 miles to St. George, Utah, where residents reported "an oddly metallic sort of taste in the air." • Increases in cancer and other radiation-related illnesses were recorded through the 1960s. • A 1962 U.S. Atomic Energy Commission report  found that "children living in St. George, Utah received high amounts of radioiodine”

16. Nautilusworld’s 1st nuclear-powered sub