I AM BECOME DEATH THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS

Those words were uttered by Robert Oppenheimer after witnessing the successful detonation of the 'gadget' as they called the first ever atomic bomb.

He recognised the potential of the new technology in 1939 and was appointed Coordinator of Rapid Rupture, a title that delighted him, by the bomb committee that Franklin Roosevelt had established to shepherd nuclear weapons research, Oppenheimer surveyed the work of bomb design being conducted at small laboratories scattered across the United States, none of them allowed to talk to each other, and proposed that the separate projects be assembled in one place under one director. That place was Los Alamos.

We are in Los Alamos and walking the same streets as Ferme, Teller, Bohr and Oppenheimer did in the 40s when this town did not exist on the maps. Mail went through a PO box in Santa Fe and censorship was ironclad.

We even walked down the street called Bathtub Row, so called because they were the only ones with tubs when the scientists were housed there.

This was the one Oppenheimer lived in.

The museum in town was excellent covering the early days of the nuclear race and then showing the problems the USA faces in maintaining their aging nuclear stockpile, without being able to set them off.

They also had an excellent area showing the efforts being made to clean up the radioactive debris left behind during the construction and testing of nuclear weapons in and around Los Alamos and in the Nevada proving grounds.

The aerial pictures showing the aftermath of years of underground testing were the eerie reminder of Robert Oppenheimer's words “ I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”