EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: I have written countless essays over the years about the infamous Trinity Test that took place eighty years ago. Trinity was the start of a long journey that has taken Humanity down the perilous road of preparation for its own destruction. Eighty years later, and after decades of my own work to abolish nuclear weapons, I am beginning to wonder if we have a death wish. It is not a question of whether or not we will one day experience a civilization-ending nuclear war, but WHEN! So long as nuclear weapons exist, it is a matter of probability that they will be used, ether accidentally or intentionally. It is quite simply a suicidal game of Russian Roulette.
Ray originally published the following essay at the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom.
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16 July 2025 marks 80 years since the detonation of the first nuclear weapon. Its legacy is that of death and destruction, with the burdens being felt disproportionately by Indigenous Peoples around the world. Eighty years on, nuclear abolition is imperative for justice and peace.
By Ray Acheson
16 July 2025
On 16 July 1945, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon on the lands of the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico. The bomb, nicknamed “Gadget,” was made of plutonium. The so-called Trinity Test was conducted at White Sands, a beautiful desert about 120 miles south of Alburquerque, on colonised lands of First Nations Peoples.
While the US government claimed the lands were “empty,” dire consequences were borne by local Indigenous communities, uranium mining workers, and others living near the test site. The lingering effects of the radioactive fallout extended beyond the immediate vicinity of the bombings, affecting generations to come and leaving a lasting scar on the environment and the lives of those residing in the surrounding regions.
The Trinity Test spread radiation across all contiguous US states as well as Canada and Mexico. Recent scientific models show significant radioactive contamination in dozens of First Nations communities over the first few days following the explosion.
The test was followed only weeks later by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in hundreds of thousands of immediate deaths and the suffering of many more from radioactive poisoning.
Legacy of harm
None of this is historical. The impacts of the Trinity Test are still being felt today, and the nuclear arms race it generated is accelerating.
Since 1945, more than 2000 nuclear “tests” have been conducted worldwide by nine nuclear-armed states, causing widespread cancers and other health tragedies, environmental contamination, and displacement.
The nine nuclear-armed states are modernising their nuclear arsenals, spending more than 100 billion dollars a year. In the midst of rising threats to use nuclear weapons and military confrontation among nuclear-armed states, the use of nuclear weapons is a horrifyingly real prospect.
The Manhattan Project today
It all began with the top-secret Manhattan Project. As the Nuclear Truth Project notes, this was a project of “unprecedented scope, initiated and sustained with private and corporate partners.”
The Manhattan Project got its name because New York City was a key node in the development of the atomic bomb. The US Army Manhattan Engineer District managed the project early on, drawing on a research programme located at Columbia University, and collaborated with private companies at 30 sites throughout the city.
The bombs used in New Mexico, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were built at what today is called the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Other sites around the world are also implicated in the bomb’s development—including uranium mines in so-called Canada and Democratic Republic of the Congo, a uranium enrichment and processing site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and a plutonium production facility in Hanford, Washington.
Oak Ridge is still operating today, even after three peace activists broke into the lab in 2013 in an act of civil disobedience to draw attention to the horrors produced at the site. Hanford is closed, but continues to leak radioactive poison into the land and water around it, lending to its distinction as “the most toxic place in America.”
Today, Los Alamos continues to function as one of the key nuclear weapon labs in the US. Its operations are expanding to build new “plutonium pits”—the cores of nuclear bombs. This has resulted in new construction at the facility, which has already run into delays and ever increasing costs.
In June 2025, the US government requested a 29 per cent increase in the budget for nuclear warhead development and production—which would be the largest increase since 1962. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the US nuclear arsenal will cost about a trillion dollars over the next decade. Meanwhile, the government has slashed social programmes related to health care, education, food security, and more.
Actions for nuclear abolition
Eighty years after the Trinity Test, the only effective way to address the test’s poisonous legacy and current harms is to abolish nuclear weapons. There are actions everyone can take, including:
- Demand reparations by all nuclear-armed states to all people impacted by nuclear weapon tests, bomb development, uranium mining, and radioactive waste;
- Demand governments ensure that aboveground nuclear weapon testing is never resumed, end other forms of nuclear weapon testing, abolish uranium mining and nuclear weapon production, and not impose nuclear waste dumps on Indigenous Peoples;
- Call on nuclear-armed states to immediately cease their nuclear weapon modernisation programmes and redirect that money towards nuclear disarmament, decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear sites, and a just transition for workers to socially and ecologically safe industries;
- Call on your government to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which prohibits all nuclear testing as well as the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons, and all other related activities;
- Urge your local city or town council to join the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s Cities Appeal in support of the TPNW; Ask your parliamentarians, senators, or congressional representatives to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge and work for nuclear disarmament;
- Get involved in ICAN’s Don’t Bank on the Bomb initiative to remove your money from nuclear weapons and compel your bank, pension fund, or financial institution to stop funding nuclear weapon production; and Find out if the universities in your area are helping to build nuclear weapons and campaign to end those contracts.
Time Zero podcast
Nuclear Truth Project
Trinity Nuclear Test’s Fallout Reached 46 States, Canada, and Mexico, Study Shows
Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America
The Prophets of Oak Ridge
ICAN’s Interactive Tool on Nuclear Weapon Test Impacts
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END NOTE: Original source URL for Ray's essay: https://www.wilpf.org/eighty-years-after-trinity-the-horror-of-the-atomic-bomb-lives-on/
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