With this quote from the Bagavad-Gita, Oppenheimer summoned in the nuclear age at 5:30 in the morning at the Trinity Site in New Mexico.
The yield of code name Gadget was estimated to be equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT - 2,000 B-29s worth of explosives.
A quote from Brigadier General T.F. Farrell regarding the blast - "The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray, and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined..."
The light from the blast was seen all over New Mexico, and in parts of Arizona, Texas, and Mexico. Windows shattered 120 miles away in Silver City, New Mexico, and the shock wave was felt in Los Alamos, 230 miles away.
Why this post? I live in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - part of the Manhattan Project. I own a home built in 1944, for the workers at the Y-12, K-25, and X-10 facilities. I go to church with folks that as young men and women, came to this City Behind the Fence, to do their jobs - without an understanding as to what the end result would be - just the knowledge that it was part of the war effort. I make a point of thanking them for what they did - because even though they didn't carry weapons, or face the enemy - they helped to end the war.
It appears that the dirty work was done in NM, explosions, why do we care about Tenn.?
Because without Oak Ridge, Gadget would have been just a lot of high explosive. We're still cleaning up the dirty work here - sixty years after the fact.
Here's a couple links regarding Oak Ridge and what they did:
The Manhattan Project Heritage Preservation Association, Inc
Uranium and Plutonium Refinement in Oak Ridge
Wikipedia - Oak Ridge National Labs role in World War II
Wikipedia again - Oak Ridge, Tennessee
A good time line and explanation on the Manhattan Project