The Ivy Mike Test
On November 1, 1952, at Enewetak Atoll, the United States detonated the first thermonuclear device, Ivy Mike, with an estimated yield of 10.4 megatons. Ivy Mike was a pivotal moment for nuclear weapons development and had profound consequences. The explosion created a 1.9-kilometer-diameter crater and wiped out local vegetation with sheer heat and shockwave. No one in their right mind would try to see something like that up close, but the Paradise VR project lets us experience Ivy Mike in virtual reality, and 360 degrees.
The story goes that Edward Teller, one of the masterminds behind the hydrogen bomb, was in Berkeley, California, at the time of the Ivy Mike detonation. Teller determined the explosion had succeeded with the help of a seismograph and immediately sent an unclassified telegram to Elizabeth Graves, leader of the remaining project at Los Alamos. The telegram only said: "It's a boy." And what a boy. With a nuclear fury of 10.4 megatons, Ivy Mike had become the first thermonuclear device to explode on the face of the Earth. However, the advantage wasn't that wide. Three years later, the Russians detonated RDS-37, with a much more "useful" format from a military standpoint. Both powers continued their sick race, detonating bomb after bomb under various conditions, and didn't stop until the early '90s with the publication of the CTBT which, by the way, still hasn't been ratified. Unless North Korea continues its delusion or India and Pakistan start eyeing each other again, there shouldn't be more nuclear tests… unless they're in virtual reality.
Paradise VR: A Front-Row Seat to History
That's exactly what Paradise VR offers us, a project shared on YouTube by the channel Yle Sandbox. The video, created in 360 degrees, places us very close to Ivy Mike at the moment of its detonation. The light that blinds us, the mushroom cloud growing on the horizon, the heat wave burning everything, and the shockwave ripping local vegetation from the ground combine to create a unique and quite disturbing experience.
https://old.neoteo.com/que-sucederia-si-detonamos-una-bomba-atomica-en-una-ciudad/The Unsettling Legacy
The next scene takes us to "The Tomb," a repository of contaminated material sealed under a concrete dome on Runit Island. All the voices we hear in the video point in the same direction: The nuclear legacy may be significant, but the climate legacy is disastrous. The inhabitants of Enewetak couldn't return to the atoll until 1980. The latest census (2011) reports a total of 664 people living there. The United States sends financial aid, but that could end in 2023. Add to that the deterioration of the Runit dome and the effects of climate change, and the future on Enewetak is worrying.
