Immersion - The Manhattan Project: A New Idea, a New Age, a New Problem

In early 1939, the Axis powers lead by Adolf Hitler were ferociously sweeping through Europe in their endeavours for global conquest. Concerned about the possibility of the Axis powers acquiring nuclear capabilities, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner approached Albert Einstein and convinced him to pen a letter to the president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to try and invigorate and expedite the nuclear research program in the U.S.. The president evaluated the potential benefits of a nuclear program and agreed that a strong nuclear program was a sufficient means to countering the Axis nuclear threat, the logic being that should we acquire nuclear weapons before they did, the Allied powers could swiftly end the war as a whole. Thus, the Manhattan Project was created.

The Manhattan Project was the nuclear weapons development project that eventually created the nuclear weapons Little Boy and Fat Man, both of which were dropped on Japan leading to their rapid surrender. The project was based in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and there it grew to employ over 130,000 people and cost over two billion dollars. This was where the world’s politics altered forever. This was where the word “warfare” acquired a whole new perspective. This was where the nuclear bomb was born.

On our immersion this fall, we visited Los Alamos and learned about this historic project. One of the more unique things we discovered was that there were a significant amount of people who were forced to vacate their homes and establishments to make room for the project. One of the more significant institutions we learned about was a school for the children of wealthy eastern families sent out to the middle of New Mexico to help improve their character and obtain an appreciation for wealth. This school was based on boy scouts and instead of being organized by grade like traditional schools, this institution organized its pupils by patrol. The older and stronger the students became, the higher rank patrol they achieved. The last class to graduate from this school had an expedited schedule, their timeline altered to ensure that the class had graduated before the school was abolished by the Manhattan Project.

The problems caused by the Manhattan Project didn’t stop at the citizens. Large quantities of acidic waste and other harmful products of research were disposed of in one of the nearby ravines. As one would expect, this didn’t do anything positive to the ecosystem. Plants started dying and some of the water became toxic, altering the environment significantly. A large concern that the scientists working on the project deliberated was the possibility that the heat from the nuclear blasts would in fact be hot enough to set the earth’s atmosphere on fire. While this may seem ludicrous to us now-a-days, back in 1939 no one else had ever set off one of these things called nuclear bombs. The concern they had was very real.

And we set off the bomb anyway.