Desert Rock IV was a series of atomic tests in Nevada in 1952 using relatively low-yield weapons (31 kilotons) and lots of soldiers in disturbingly close proximity. Here’s a silent bit of film:
Some time back (well, about a year and a half ago) I took a number of the frames and stitched them together (and painted in the gaps) to show the whole mushroom cloud.
Not perfect but… what’reya gonna do.
Along with some rather remarkable photos and films of soldiers looking up at a mushroom cloud looming over them, this series of tests also produced some of the most amazing photos ever taken. One such is shown below. This shows a nuclear explosion a few millionths of a second old… the fireball is big enough to have consumed the “cab” the bomb was put in at the top of a steel tower, but the fireball has not yet reached the ground. The spikes below the fireball are known as “rope tricks.” The light emitted by the surface of the fireball at this stage was intense enough to cause the towers steel guy wires stabilizing the tower to simply explode. The mottling of the surface of the fireball is due to the mass distribution of the bomb components, the cab and other surroundings around the point of explosion. You can just make out the tower directly below the fireball.
I posted a video on this a while back.