Radio Bikini: A Brief History Of The Atomic Bomb

Radio Bikini is a movie from 1988 by Robert Stone about two atomic tests (“Able” and “Baker”) that the United States government did under the name of “Operation Crossroads”. If you were to go to Google and type in the words “Atomic Bomb” you would come up with a list of over 12,700,000 links, with the vast majority of them being about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are very important in the history of the atomic bomb; there is another significantly more important location that many people have never knew existed. That other place is Bikini Atoll, which is a part of the Marshall Islands (a group of islands located in the Pacific Ocean about half way between Hawaii and Australia). This group of islands was composed of 26
They positioned themselves in an area that provided a good observation point away from the island, so they could witness the detonation of the atomic bomb first hand. This bomb was designed to explode before impact with the surface of the water. (Shurcliff, 1947) At almost 9:00am sharp, the first bomb exploded over the lagoon. Which in turn, sent a wall of fire and destruction in all directions. Directly below that explosion were various targets that were positioned to absorb the blast and radiation to be used for testing and monitoring. Aboard these ships were multiple types of animals and scientific devices that were to be used to help gather information. Some scientists and researchers were expecting complete and total annihilation of the target ships. So, once the majority of the radiological debris cleared the impact area, ships were permitted to enter the lagoon to take readings and document the destruction caused by the explosion. They did not find total destruction as they had hoped. Only a couple of ships instantly sank, others took hours to finally meet the bottom of the ocean floor, with the majority of them staying
Test “Baker” took a different approach to the detonation of an atomic bomb. Instead of the bomb exploding at or above the surface, this one was planned to go off submerged 90ft under water. (Delgado, 2009) Once again, the lagoon was evacuated to safe distances and the next test was underway. At 8:34 on July 25th, a massive 300ft thick cone of water arose from the ocean. Water shot up at over 2,000 feet per second, and the eye of the cone spewed gases from the explosion at over 11,000 feet per second. The combination of the water-wall and eye of gas formed the typical mushroom cloud formation. The wall of water created nearly 100ft tall tidal waves of radioactive water that smashed and demolished 9 more of the target ships. From submarines imploding, to aircraft carriers being ripped open at the seams. This test had far more destructive power than the first. Every single target vessel had radioactive material stuck to it. Some of the ships had contamination so severe, surveyors hit their maximum daily dose in less than 10 minutes