The Atomic Bomb Essay

On July 16, 1945, the first ever nuclear device was successfully tested by the United States in a desert in New Mexico. Code named Trinity; the bombs that would develop from this test would change the world forever. This test marked the day that nuclear technology would begin to evolve. The dropping of the first atomic bomb has ultimately benefited the United States. The atomic bomb put an end to World War two, it led to the development of nuclear power plants, and the arms race caused by the bomb led to the development of treaties and defense systems to prevent nuclear holocaust.
The dropping of the atomic bomb put an end the Second World War and saved many lives in relation to the ones taken by it.   The first successful atomic device test at Trinity New Mexico would be just a prelude to the catastrophic events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the Trinity test the device exploded with an energy equivalent to around 20 kilotons of TNT and left a crater of radioactive glass, called Trinitite, 10 feet deep and 1,100 feet wide (document F). The test was of an implosion type bomb, it was felt that because of the complexity of the design that it needed to be tested. The nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed on August 9 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. These are to date the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. It has been debated whether dropping the bombs was the correct decision, but the grim fact is that there is not an easy, bloodless way to victory in war. Approximately 80,000 were killed at Hiroshima and 40,000 at Nagasaki, and within the next year about 200,000 would die from the effects of radiation sickness (document B). There is little doubt that, even without the atomic bomb, the United States would have won the war- but probably through an invasion that would have cost tens of thousands of American lives and possibly millions of Japanese lives....