"One of the scientists, the 1938 Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Enrico Fermi, was willing to bet anyone that the test would wipe out all life on Earth, with special odds on the mere destruction of the entire State of New Mexico!" Not only did one of their top physicists feel this way, General Thomas Farrell said: "Many were apprehensive and concerned that the blast might launch a cataclysmic reaction in the upper atmosphere leading to the destruction of the world. We were reaching into the unknown and we did not know what might come of it. It can be safely said that most of those present - Christian, Jew and Atheist - were praying and praying harder than they had ever prayed before....In that brief instant in the remote New Mexico desert the tremendous effort of the brains and brawn of all these people came suddenly and startlingly to the fullest fruition. Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and then the announcer shouted 'Now!' And there came this tremendous burst of light followed shortly thereafter by the deep growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief...but then somberly said, 'I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.'
"Several of the observers standing back of the shelter to watch the lighting effects were knocked flat by the blast....There was a feeling in that shelter that those concerned with its nativity should dedicate their lives to the mission that it would always be used for good and never for evil.
"In Los Alamos, 230 miles to the north where the work had been done, a group of scientists' wives who had stayed up all night for the not so secret test, saw the light and heard the distant sound. One wife, Jane Wilson, described it this way: 'Then it came. The blinding light no one had ever seen. The trees illuminated, leaping out. The mountains flashing into life. Later, the long slow rumble. Something had happened, all right, for good or ill.'" (References: Department of State, Foreign Relations for the United States Conference of Berlin (Potsdam) (1945); Lansing, Lamont, Day of Trinity (1965),City of Fire: Los Alamos and the Atomic Age - James W. Kunetka, and Standing By and Making Do: Women in Wartime Los Alamos - Jane S. and Charlotte Serber.)
See also: TRINITY SITE by the U.S. Department of Energy