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Ground Zero

© lawhawk

There was once a time when Ground Zero used to mean the birthplace of the nuclear age. Trinity. The atomic bomb. Back on July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., US scientists succeeded in exploding an atomic bomb that unlocked the power of an atom to create a destructive power orders of magnitude greater than any conventional explosive ever created.

When those scientists detonated that very first nuclear bomb, bets were placed to decide the explosive yield. One scientist even conjectured that the detonation would set fire to the oxygen in the atmosphere and kill everything on earth. The detontation at Trinity opened a new age of explosive power - the atomic age. The atomic bomb was used only twice in combat - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - both in 1945 and both bombs effectively ended World War II. While one violent war ended, a new war - a Cold War began. The Cold War led to a new arms race between nuclear powers the US and Soviet Union. Thousands of nuclear weapons were built and deployed around the world and the destructive power was such that the scientists prediction of setting the oxygen on fire could conceivably come true. All life on the planet could now hang in the balance between superpowers.

That balance rocked too and fro, sometimes coming close to nuclear holocaust. The Cuban Missile Crisis was only the most public of those incidents. However, there were several others that involved misread combat tapes used by US defense forces, miscommunications, and exercise accidents. All throughout the Cold War, those nuclear weapons remained more or less safely tucked away in secure locations with the hope that they would never be used.

In the intervening years, scientists developed all manner of technologies - microchips, aircraft, celphones, television, computers - that allowed people to communicate and interact on never before seen levels. Cultures clashed and interacted in new ways. Some fell behind the times, and some believed that they were being held back by others.

Over sixty years passed between the original Ground Zero and the new one. The new Ground Zero was created when a group of dedicated Islamic fundamentalists took civilian aircraft and flew themselves into a group of US landmarks - the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thousands of lives were lost and the US engaged in a new kind of war - a war on terrorism. September 11 changed people's lives in ways they never imagined only the day before.

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