Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie

I've had the DVD of Trinity and Beyond for a while, and I eventually decided I wanted something more. This blu ray version was heavily discounted, so I finally pressed the red button and got it. Wow. The picture quality is miles above the DVD, better than I could ever have hoped for. Magnificent restoration.

Fantastic footage of early bomb explosions and interviews.

this documentary is both facinating and frightening the tests took place when i was a kidwhen you're talking about a weapon that can destroy a city,, and is rated in MEGATONS that is frighteningnot only that but this film i revelant today now there are 3 idiots running around the nuclear powder keg with blow torches,and the sobering and frightening thing is this is happening RIGHT NOW north korea ,, china an russia all have leaders that have no concept o a nuclar explosion is,, or the consequenses afterword will be do these fools think that if they fire a missile at a country that that country won't retaliatewith missiles of their own?? once that missile leaves that silo the whole ball of wax is going to snow ballout of control and every body gets it in the head i promise you that if tis scenariio becomes the real magila this world will become a very different place a much harsher place to survive in

The Atomic Bomb Movie conveys more about the "progress" (if that word can be used in this context) of the nuclear arms race than it perhaps means to. Even as it shows glamorous-looking nuclear footage, it unintentionally conveys a strong anti-nuclear message. As we move sequentially from the detonation of 100 tons of conventional explosives to the initial 10,000-ton (10 kiloton, or 10-kT) Trinity explosion in New Mexico, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (likewise 10-20 kT yields), and then on to 10-to-60 million-ton (10-60 MT) explosions (jumping not by a factor of two but by a factor of 1000 in explosive yield as we go!), we are witnesses to a spectacular example of psychological desensitization. (And believe me, the footage shown in this film is spectacular, if that's the right word, beyond belief.)This theme of desensitization is borne out by the interviews with two atomic weaponeers, Frank Shelton and Edward Teller. Shelton is a regular-guy engineer, and seems highly accomplished in his trade. But it's Teller who is truly revealing (and revealed), as he disingenuously claims that he only wanted to "gain knowledge that would deter Stalin" militarily when he sought to build the real doomsday weapon, the hydrogen bomb, in the 1950s. (Teller doesn't get around to explaining that, unlike Hiroshima-type fission weapons that can only be built up to a size of tens of kilotons, which is quite enough to establish a deterrent force, fusion-powered hydrogen bombs can reach unlimited yields--tens to hundreds of megatons--limited only by the weight-carrying capacity of delivery systems.) Teller sounds quite proud when he describes how he pushed Truman very hard to build those things, and he looks and sounds immensely and smugly self-satisfied when he says that Truman "made the right choice" to develop those Strangelovian things.In the movie, we see H-bomb shots that reach tens of millions of tons of TNT-equivalent yield, the unholy children of Edward Teller and his co-inventor (and even smarter innovator) Stan Ulam. (Teller, by the way, barely credits Ulam as the co-inventor of the H-bomb, right under his breath. Talk about a display of megalomania--Teller doesn't even want to share the credit for inventing the doomsday device that can end civilization.) What we see happening throughout The Atomic Bomb Movie, despite the efforts of the people who were making these weapons to make us believe otherwise, is the normalization of horrific power into a stockpile of devices that these people apparently believed could be used and controlled as if they were nothing more than oversized artillery shells. (We do see an atomic cannon being fired--WOW, would that have ever been fun, I've got to admit!!) They seem to think of them as merely oversized flash bulbs.They weren't (and aren't) flash bulbs, and the film footage in this movie demonstrates exactly why they simply cannot ever be used in any meaningful sense. After you have seen this film you may be able to begin to understand why only a few dozen of the smallest types, with Hiroshima-Nagasaki types of yields, will always be enough to deter any country from attacking another--and why they are utterly useless as military weapons. Concomitant with that understanding is the realization that the interview claims made by Teller (who eventually talked Reagan into thinking that atomic-bomb-powered Star Wars systems could actually be built and would be effective) are so disingenuous as to amount to lies. This movie clearly demonstrates the futility of pursuing the development of atomic weapons by --any-- country.This DVD does not tell the story of science run amok; science as an enterprise of the human spirit has practically nothing to do with any of the shots that appear in this film. What could have ever been the "scientific" point of subjecting humans and animals to the ghastly "test shot" effects that we see portrayed in this movie, white-coated field technicians who examine post-shot, dead and dying animals notwithstanding? There's that desensitization thing again.No, it wasn't for science that this work was done. This movie demonstrates that it was for the sake of hubris, of satisfying a misguided demand for "power" that these shots were fired, and that humans and animals (both the ones near the bombs and the "downwinders" across the United States and around the world) were treated as if they were irrelevant or worse. The situation regarding human subjects becomes simply ludicrous when we see a little old lady from some Podunk Junction hometown, a real-life Ma Kettle, being interviewed while sitting in a slit trench in pre-dawn darkness, awaiting an atomic-test-range bomb blast while wearing her oversized Civil Defense hard hat. OMG. Apparently the US government wanted to get some film footage of her to reassure "regular" people that, in the event of an actual atomic war, we would all just ride out a blast or two and then go on with our lives--an example of desensitization taken to the tenth power. Never mind that by the time that footage was composed, the bomb arsenals of the US and USSR were large enough to obliterate the entire world's civilization several times over, or that, as Winston Churchill said, all the nuclear powers were managing to do was to ensure that they could "make the rubble bounce".In another example of desensitization, this time with respect to fiscal responsibility, The Atomic Bomb Movie shows how the governments of the US and USSR became accustomed to spending unlimited sums of money to pursue increasingly bizarre and useless engineering feats (namely the building and firing of increasingly larger and increasingly irrelevant bombs) toward no useful end. For some reason, there never was (and apparently still isn't) enough money available in either country to pay for nutrition or health care for people who are poor, but the US and USSR clearly never lacked the money to fund even the weirdest enterprises that people like Teller could devise. This movie documents the firing of hundreds of bombs that each cost hundreds of thousands to millions (and in some cases billions) of dollars apiece. And what have we now got to show for all of that, given that we had a secure deterrent force when we had built the first few hundred Hiroshima-size bombs by about 1950? What have now got to show for all of the money that was spent for the last six decades on developing and building more and more of these things? Just a lot of wasted effort that could have been gone into more productive pursuits, if this movie gives us any indication at all.This movie confirms the conclusion of President Eisenhower (himself no stranger to war and certainly no softie on defense issues) when he bemoaned the unholy alliance that he saw developing between hubristic military leaders who wanted unlimited power, of American industries that profited handsomely from bomb production and bomb testing (we see, for example, how Western Electric found that early atomic bombs were hand-crafted oddities and then turned A-bomb production into an efficient, mass-production operation employing tens of thousands of assembly-line workers including lots of women who look like our mothers), and of political people who thought they could buy "security" and "credibility" if only they could build a big enough atomic stockpile--which turned out to never be big enough to make us secure at all. We see all of them working together to expend uncountable sums of money on utterly useless and destructive weapons.The Atomic Bomb Movie's unintentional messages make it a must-see DVD. By looking like pro-atomic propaganda, it (apparently unwittingly) becomes the best anti-atomic piece that you can find. It has a more effective anti-atomic message than any intentionally anti-atomic movie could have ever achieved. I would like to think that the people who made it understood this--and perhaps they did; they're clearly pretty smart cookies. The movie is ably produced and narrated by Messrs. Kuran and Shatner, respectively. The only reason that I have given it four stars instead of five is that I think it substantially underplays the ghastly effects of atomic bombs on humans, animals, and the Earth's environment. But I do understand why it had to be made this way: If the full extent of atomic effects had been documented in this film, it would have probably been essentially unsellable. No thinking, non-desensitized human being would be able to watch that kind of show for more than a few seconds. So as this genre goes, The Atomic Bomb Movie is as good as you're going to get.

This documentary follows the entire evolution of the atomic bomb, from the first scaling test at Trinity, to the last moments of the cold war. Almost all the footage comes from de-classified military films of the experiments and tests. Most of the rest consists of news real footage from the time. The movie consists of a sequence of natural milestones in the history of the nuclear weapons development: e.g. this was the first simple uranium bomb, this was the first thermonuclear device, this was the first tritium accelerator bomb, this was the first H-Bomb, etc. Each stage of development is capped with a successful test explosion, which is usually above ground, and in our natural environment.When you stop to consider that the Hiroshima was destroyed by a simple 15 kiloton bomb, and both the Russians and we American's detonated many scores of devices vastly more powerful than that, you are amazed that the world is still here, and that we still live. The Russians blew up a 5 megaton device above ground in Siberia, for God's sake! That is the equivalent of 333.333 Hiroshimas.It is no wonder that so many people in 1960s through 1980s developed cancer. It was understood, as early as the 1950s, that radio active fallout was entering our food supply by binding with the calcium in cow's milk. Of course, there are many active pathways, but this particular one was understood early on. This documentary will scare the hell out of you, and it will make you question the current research that indicates most cancer is a product of virus activity in the human body.This documentary is presented in a very calm, cool, matter-of-fact fashion. The director and writers do not make firebrand political speeches during the course of this documentary. They just present the sequence of events using archive footage, and a minimum number of interviews with folks like Edward Teller.While this approach will not please the young (and exceeding stupid) Berkeley political firebrand, this is by far the most effective technique for communicating the dangers of nuclear weapons, weapons development, and nuclear testing. I noticed that several no-nuke Greenies posted reviews that expressed some dismay at the detached nature of the documentary. They should not be dismayed. The tone is the key to this documentaries success. The directors are to be congratulated for this.

This is one of my favorite movies. It shows so many nuclear detonations, it's a one of a kind movie. A must see.

This documentary is both funny and terrifying. It is also more than a little depressing. I recommend it to any fan of real horror. The nuclear arms race is probably the best argument for human intelligence being a highly overrated evolutionary trait .

Bluray version is far better than the original dvd

生きる、生存することを徹底的に否定される恐怖。この映像の中には恐怖以外の感覚は存在しないはずなのに美しさ、破壊のカタルシス、ガジェットに対するフェティシズムとエロチシズム、以上の感覚に支配されてしまうそんな悲しさがある。

This movie makes people realize the magnitude of which nuclear bombs were tested. And, thankfully were not used post WWII. The enormous size of bombs developed after WWII could have possibly destroyed our planet.

need to see movie....