Summary: The First Atomic Bomb

The first atomic bomb ever dropped was during world war II. The process in making an atomic bomb and using it was a long and difficult project that took maybe people putting in work and making big decisions. Plutonium is created when an atom of uranium-238 absorbs a neutron and becomes plutonium-239. The reactor generates the neutrons in a controlled chain reaction. There are many different opinions about the making and the use of the atomic bomb during world war two and even still today. At the time the atomic bomb was dropped more people agreed with it, but in today's world more people disagree with it. During the World War II many American lives were lost and the atomic bomb added to this. Although the atomic bomb added to the number of …show more content…
Henry L. Stimson was secretary of war for president Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman he was considered one of the wisest and most knowledgeable men in government and played a big role in the long process of researching and developing the bomb. Henry L. Stimson was secretary of war so he had a lot of control over the war. The bomb was being made about a decade before Stimson stepped into office, however he continued to push the development and research of the bomb. The first device that was exploded on 27 January 1951 and this testing brought a new meaning to boom town because instead of a town booming with growth and prosperity the town gets destroyed with a boom and is left with nothing. The tests bombings were not just used to see how successful the bomb would be in war the testings were also done to impress the enemy. The effects of the bomb were not known so testing was a very dangerous task. “The crew was based in St.George, 150 miles from Yucca flat where a year earlier two particularly nasty atomic bombs had been tested.”(DeGroot 237) The two testing bombs were dropped a year earlier and the testing site was 150 miles away from Yucca, radiation can travel 200 to 800 kilometers this shows that the blasts could have gotten radiation all the way to Yucca. The radiation, damage caused during the heyday of atmospheric testing only became apparent many years later. The aftermath damage was unknown until further testing with the atomic bomb so the radiation had been already in the testing area by the time they knew how much radiation it caused. The Testing needed to create the bomb was needed to see the outcome of the blast, but the research needed to make the bomb to start with was the challenge. “By the early 1930s the structure of the atom was known to be composed of a central nucleus made of positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons; negatively charged