Alumnus lectures on atomic bomb
Diego Gomez | March 29In spring 1953, 600 people at the site and another 15 million television viewers watched an atomic bomb explode in the Mojave Desert. UNLV professor Andrew Kirk said scientists coordinated the atomic explosions to demonstrate the eerie effects on a house and the mannequins set up inside it. In the UNM alumnus’ lecture, “Doomtown: Picturing Home on the Nevada Test Site,” Kirk said the test site was thought to be nothing more than an empty space in Nevada, but in reality, hundreds of thousands lived there, including the Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes. “The West is a complicated place,” Kirk said. “What appeared to be blank spots are full of history. Empty landscapes, supposed waste lands, are loaded with human history of forgotten people and forgotten stories.” The day of the demonstration, Native American tribes protested at the site’s gate, but the scientists proceeded.
