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Learning More About The Manhattan Project

20 Aug

We went to see Oppenheimer, a movie I knew I had to see, but at the same time I was dreading it. We all hear about Los Alamos and what happened secretly in New Mexico for years as the science was developed to create the Trinity device that effectively ended WW2, while also changing the world for eternity. 

I have been to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.  I saw the documentation about how President Truman found out about the Manhattan Project. The movies about the impact of the bombs were horrifying.  To see the ‘green plug’ from the Fat Man, plutonium bomb that fell on Nagasaki actually made me shiver.

I knew about the Manhattan Project and the work done in Los Alamos, but I was not aware of what happened in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  And it was not until this summer that I learned about Hanford, Washington.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was the military headquarters for the Manhattan Project.  The town of Hanford, Washington, was where the plutonium was processed. I am not a physicist or an historian of WW2. I knew the little bit that I knew, and to be honest that was enough. Knowing what I know now is a bit frightening.

This summer we took a cruise on the Columbia and Snake rivers to learn about the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  Though I did learn so much about the history of that journey, docking near Hanford. opened my eyes to the immensity of the Manhattan Project and the multiple places where the secret experiments were carried out and the bombs were manufactured.

The Hanford Engineering Works was where the plutonium was processed.  This almost 600-square-mile site was another secret city where people worked on the development of the nuclear bomb.   To this day, two thirds of our country’s nuclear waste is contained somewhere on this site.  The water and air continue to be monitored. Barriers have been built to keep the waste contained.   Families with children live and work here.  I am not sure I would want to live there.  But many do.

While in the Hanford area, in what is called the Tri-Cities, we visited the REACH Museum. The museum focus on this area and the time before Hanford became part of the Manhattan Project, but it also has an area devoted to the development of the atomic bomb.  For me this was a revelation.  I had absolutely no idea what happened here! Just like in Los Alamos, an entire town and community was developed in a secluded area basically uninhabited.

In 2015 the Manhattan Project National Historical Park was created.  This part preserves areas in the three sites where the atomic bomb and its secret development was worked on: Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Hanford. Parts of these sites are open to the public.

Watching Oppenheimer was emotionally intense.  To see how these people came together to invent the unimaginable and how some were horrified by what they had developed.  To see Oppenheimergo from a man honored for his work as the director of the Manhattan Project to a pariah for his work afterwards to keep additional bombs from being developed. 

To see how he was attacked and verified was a bit frightening.  I knew about MaCarthyism and the attack on many Americans because they might have once been communists.  I learned in college how these attacks hurt many innocent people.  And how Joseph McCarthy was finally stopped.  I did not know that the fear about communism also impacted Robert Oppenheimer. 

In the movie they ask him when opinions on the bomb and what he did had changed.  To me this was a ridiculous question. Can you imagine being among those scientist who learned how to use the power of the atom and plutonium to kill hundreds of thousands of people?   I would imagine that many had second thoughts about what they had unleashed even though the bombs did end the war with Japan.

At the REACH Museum this display indicates increased bombs during the Cold War.

We all need to learn about how the bomb was developed and the efforts to stop the continued development of bombs in the 1950s.  Perhaps the world would be a different place if that had happened.  Because even today the fear of nuclear bombs continues to be a threat to our world.  So we have to ask, as Oppenheimer did, did he “become Death, the destroyer of worlds”? 

I hope not.

To learn about the Manhattan Project National Park   https://www.nps.gov/mapr/index.htm

The Reach Museum: https://visitthereach.us/

Wonderful Changes at Truman Presidential Library

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Smart Phones Are Getting Just A Little Too Spooky For Me

15 Jul

High tech keeps changing.  To me becoming more and more intrusive into our lives.  Personally, I have never had allowed an Alexa in my home.  And although we have a smart doorbell with surveillance cameras, all of our cameras are outside.  There is nothing watching inside. To me that would be an invasion of privacy.  We now know that sometimes the information that these devices listen to is saved.  YUCK.

I do know that our smart phones can track us and know where we are. That does not bother me because I turned tracking off in my phone except when using certain apps. I even have my Siri turned off. But now my opinion about smart phones is changing.  These devices know more than what we think! 

My husband purchased a new car that arrived in late December. His new all electric Chevy Bolt replaces the Chevy Volt, hybrid plug-in, he drove for 11 years.  His new car does not have a separate navigation system, instead it uses his IPhone for the guidance. To me this has become an eye-opening experience.

The first time I knew something different with the navigation is when I got into the car to go to a friend’s home.  We go there once a week because I take a yoga class my friend teaches, while our husbands visit. But it was still surprising when my husband pointed out the map on the car’s screen.  The map popped up with a route already highlighted to their home.

“Wow! Look at that,” my husband announced. “The car knows where we are going!”  I was spooked.  How would the car know! My husband edited his remarks.  Well, it is my phone that knows because we go there once a week.  He obviously has tracking turned on for his phone.

I understand the concept of continuous tracking.  But still having the route already programed on the car’s navigation made my hair rise.

“What if you don’t plan to go there today?  Then what do you do,” I asked.  “Will the car let you change your destination?  Or is the car and your phone in charge.”

We both laughed.  But I was serious. Would the car let him change the destination.  I don’t know because he did not try.

On another day, when I went with him to our weekly Weight Watchers meeting, there it was: the route to Weight Watchers was highlighted.  Again, no big deal according to my husband.  His phone knew he went there weekly.   It still sent a little shiver through me.  I do not want my phone to know where I go each day! I like having my own personal space that even my phone should not register.

However, now I am not so sure that this is even a joke or ok or even acceptable because of what happened this week.  My husband and I made a condolence call/shiva visit to the home of someone we both really liked and care about.  We had never been to his home before.  After typing in the address, the navigation gave us great directions to his home.  We paid our respects. Stayed for the service and then got back into the car to head home.

As I explained we have never been to that house before and rarely go to that side of town.  Thus what happened next was just a little too spooky for me.  

As we turned on to the main road that would take us the six miles to our home, the navigation system changed.  Instead of the directions to take us home, it was now taking us to Cold Stone Creamery, my husband’s favorite ice cream store.  The only problem was it wasn’t taking us to the Cold Stone Creamery near our home.  No!  It is directing us to a Cold Stone Creamery we had never been to before, but it was very close to where we were driving.

My husband was amazed.  “Look at that!  It wants us to go for an ice cream My phone knows I am upset and wants to cheer me up! There is a Cold Stone Creamery here!”

Wait. That is not okay.  We did not type in Cold Stone Creamery.  We did not ask Siri.  We did not mention it.  We were just heading home.  And on its own volition, my husband’s phone put in a route to an ice cream store.

JUST WOW!

“So if the phone GPS wanted you to drive into a lake, would you do it?” was the thought that came into my mind.” But I did not say it.  What I did say is, “Let’s go home. We really do not need ice cream.” (I was trying to keep to our WW plan.)

I was wrong.  The thought was now in my husband’s mind.  He needed ice cream.  It would cheer him up after a sad moment paying his respects to the widow and family.  We followed the navigation system and had a delicious treat before the car’s navigation posted the directions home.

I have been thinking about this experience for several days now, trying to understand what happened.  I think I do now.  My husband does go to Cold Stone Creamery at two other locations. I guess his phone would be aware of that.  The Cold Stone Creamery his phone directed us to is right next door to the Apple Store, a store we have visited twice in the last year.  Could that be why the phone changed the navigation?  But then wouldn’t have wanted the Apple Store? Or perhaps my husband is eating more ice cream than I am aware of? 

It doesn’t matter.  I am still stunned into disbelief that after a shiva call the car and phone directed my husband to get ice cream, the one thing that would really cheer him up after a sad moment.  Phones know us more than we are aware, and that is very spooky.  A bit too Spooky for me.

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