The fact that this is tiny compared to what we have now is utterly terrifying

Just imagine putting all of this together, being a part of that team, and having no idea what you were about to witness ... and then seeing the actuality of it all. It has to be absolutely shocking.

Bro just spoiled the Oppenheimer movie

For scale these cameras were placed 10k yards(5.5 mi) away. Go to Google Earth and draw a measurement line from your home to 10k yards in any direction and you get a really good perspective how gigantic this explosion was. Being this far and still having to pan the camera up to see it. It's insane and this is a "small" nuke. This was at least 25x more powerful than the Beirut explosion from 2020. Like imagine something the size of a basketball exploding 6 miles away from you and this is what you see? Nukes are straight out of science fiction I swear. Horrific yet Amazing.

0:25 That second clip REALLY puts this all into scale. Imagine seeing piles of flying dust THIS TALL form before you in such an instant. You would forget to breathe for a good few seconds. This is as mesmerising as it is terrifying. Haunting, in both senses of the word

0:25 utterly insane to think that's an actual bomb/explosion, and not an animation, movie, or video game. The sheer power being unleashed there is just ridiculous. To see that amount of smoke appear so quickly and spread so far. Mind blowing. I would've loved to see one of these tests with my own eyes.

The fact that this is considered "small" by today's standards shouldn't sit well with anyone. Little Boy was even "weaker", at 15 kilotons, yet its detonation killed around 70,000 INSTANTLY. 😳

" We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another." - J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1965

It doesn't seem like such little plutonium should be able to irradiate such a large area. Incredible power. It's pretty wild we figured this technology out in WWII. What a leap in understanding.

Can’t believe Josh Peck was there to witness this

Wish the one in Oppenheimer looked more like this. Looked more like just a fireball instead of a mushroom cloud.

If you look closely, you can see a flash of lightning at 0:46, similar to what sometimes happens during a volcanic eruption

Everyone likes to quote the one line "now I've become death..", when there's an even better and more fitting quote: "When I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world... I believe we did."

I just watched Oppenheimer and I would have been happier if they used this footage and with some add sound

the way the oppenheimer movie really only showed the equivalent of that first mushroom…but i did not expect it to suddenly expand like that. and todays nuclear arsenal is even more horrifying.

wow so surprised the 2nd half of this is very close to the oppenheimer scene, just wished the start of the explosion was shown more and brighter in the movie

Crazy part is you don’t even need an HD camera with sound to observe how violent and devastating these explosions are

Gotta say Nolan should’ve just used this footage the real deal is a lot better than practical effects to which I still don’t how it was all pulled off but I give them credit for the effort and attention to detail that they put in.

Terrifyingly beautiful in a way. I’m not sure how to describe it.

As Ian Malcom put it in JP: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should"

They should've just used this footage in the movie.

This was a big thing Chris Nolan Got Wrong. Everyone at the Trinity site who witnessed the explosion's light was so incredibly bright that it turned the nighttime desert landscape into DAY (briefly). The desert suddenly appeared as it normally did under the noon day sun. And in OPPENHEIMER the explosion never did this. I wish someone would ask Nolan if this was his artistic decision or.... again, his psychological aversion to well-made CG effects. CG could have fixed the opening of the sequence (of a real gasoline-plus-other-chemicals explosion) and bathed the desert briefly in noon day light for a few seconds. Which, to my mind, would have been better than what is in the film. For all the film's incredible accuracy of the account, he left out this one aspect that astonished those present - no one had ever seen anything that could light up a landscape of hundreds of miles.

Did you see the lightning generated by the dust cloud at around the 45 second mark? Just left of center in the lower part of the frame. Just like a volcano.

John: We're not gonna make are we? T-800: It's in your nature to destroy yourselves. John: Yeah, major drag huh.

Tens of thousands of residents of New Mexico have never been compensated for the cancer causing nuclear fallout… my grandma lived in those areas and died of a really aggressive brain cancer the doctors had never seen before. Please spread awareness!!!

Nolan dropped the ball so badly during this scene. 6 barrels of gasoline looked just plan awful, this footage edited with the best VFX in Hollywood would have made this such powerful moment.

"Operated this morning and the results already look promising. Dr. Groves pleased."

Should have used this footage in Oppenheimer

I wish Nolan used this footage for the nuke in Oppenheimer, it was UNDER..WHELMING!

This blast made me realize something: At first, there is a rapid expansion and increase in energy as a sphere quickly forms and pushes everything out of it's way. This takes maybe less than a second. After that, there is no more energy coming into the system from fission. The fission is over in the first second. From 12 seconds in to 13 seconds in. the rest of the footage in that shot is the dispersal of that energy. That dispersal happens at a much slower rate. The same would describe the beginning of the universe the way we currently think of it. There's a quick burst of sudden expansion which then slows down a lot. Quick addition of energy, slow dispersal of energy. the third dimension came into being this way. First there was a singularity. 3 Dimensional space cannot exist there. Then suddenly it comes into being quickly, receiving lots and lots of energy. Then that energy slowly disperses until the heat death of the universe. The universe is functioning exactly like a nuclear explosion does. Or any other explosion for that matter.

One clarification. The first bomb dropped on Japan was an uranium bomb. The uranium bomb had never been tested because the highly-enriched uranium was so difficult to make. The physicists were so confident that they felt testing of the uranium bomb was not needed. The 2nd bomb dropped on Japan was a plutonium bomb like like the bomb used in the trinity test.

Lol now look at Nolan's gasoline fire-cloud... it looks nothing like it XD

The Oppenheimer movie depiction did not meet the expectations.

I’m kinda glad they didn’t use this exact footage in the movie. Seeing the human reaction is almost more compelling than footage you can find on KZfaq.

Well, thanks for posting a spoiler for the Oppenheimer movie. Now I know how it ends. No point paying to see it now!

The Trinity test did film with color film. But the color film was so solarised by the radiation and brightness of the blast that it was useless. So it was thrown away with only a few still shots being saved. These shots are famous. But with 21st century image processing it is now possible to colorize it now.

Not gonna lie I think Nolan should’ve done the nuke scene with CGI instead of practical. I admire what he was able to do with practical but the real trinity test explosion was way bigger than what we saw in the movie.

Minor mistake in the colorization, that eerie glow surrounding the cloud at 0:56 was actually blue- a result of the radiation ionizing the air.

...there's something horrifically mesmerising about this and I'm not sure what it is. Something so destructive but so powerful you can't look away

Colorized footage as best as cameras could have captured them, but nothing like how the real thing looked. A real nuclear detonation is brighter than you can imagine. Like a welding spark that fills your entire vision. In early tests, soldiers stationed dozens of miles away who did not have the special protective goggles were directed to face in the opposite direction, shut their eyes, and put their hands over their face; some reported the flash was still so bright that they could see the outlines of their own finger bones.

They should’ve just used the actual footage for Oppenheimer. Ngl the explosion in the movie isn’t that big, kinda underwhelming. But this? … even watching it on my phone, you can tell that is a massive explosion.

1:20 is straight up terrifying

It's just bewildering to me that Nolan didn't use this footage. The PR around it alone would have been fantastic! "Nolan works with Peter Jackson to breathe new life into blah blah blah... never before seen blah blah blah... I saw Peter's work on 'They Shall Not Grow Old' and knew right then and there blah blah blah... When we brought Kip in to work on Gargantua blah blah blah... Asking ourselves how we could top that blah blah blah... 2000 hours compute time and AI 12K interpolation diffusion control morphology big words blah blah blah... What could be more real than real blah blah blah..." Like DAMN... What a missed opportunity!

Eyewitnesses to this test described seeing every color in the rainbow and several incredible shades of purple. This one is all yellow and red. Suggestion is to research what eyewitnesses said about it and go from there.

went to the trinity test site a few years ago, very interesting place to visit......great history

They should've used CGI to make the explosion bigger in the film to make it as seen here

I was so let down with the explosion effect in Oppenheimer. It looked like "Atomic Train" with those awful close-up shots of a gasoline fire. The film itself was fantastic, but the explosion was a stain on the experience.

A force of nature! I visited the site in the 80’s at the time I worked on the range within 10 miles and lived in nearby Socorro. Fascinating area, would like to go back one day.

I really wish Nolan had just used the original footage, and gone through the process of refining it with the best enhancement technology to date, in order to maintain its integrity.

Absolutely amazing that not even current Hollywood magic could even compare to the reality as filmed in the 1940s

saw Oppenheimer on IMAX and maybe it was the big screen but the explosion didn't feel very big, the countdown scene and the sound was perfect. But the visuals of the explosion was't what i was expecting from a Nolan movie. Maybe he should have just used stock footage from the real explosion would have been much better that what we got.

Oppenheimer really did the trinity test justice IMO by nailing the vibe that I usually get from watching videos of atomic explosions: they're utterly gorgeous, yet terrifying at the same time. I kinda took a crash course on watching atomic explosion videos before the movie came out and that's the one thing that always stood out to me- how something so utterly horrifying in what it could cause could be so beautiful at the same time. And that's exactly what Oppenheimer perfectly nailed.

Lol just because of Oppenheimer movie I'm getting all these recommended videos of nuclear bomb explosions 😅

"Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds"..

This bomb is tiny compared to what we have today

When you see this, it makes you realize Christopher Nolan did a great job depicting the bomb. The first bomb here was not the atomic bomb people see in movies today. The ones we see in movies today resemble more of the Castle Bravo and the Tsar Bomba nuclear tests. The first Trinity test is tiny compared to what we have today. Hundreds of times smaller than modern warheads. It would have been inaccurate for Nolan to portray a bomb that flew over the mountains and whose mushroom cloud extended beyond the cloud line.

Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

I find it rather heartening that the U.S. only used these weapons twice after this test. If it had been Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia that had developed this weapon, I doubt there would have been such incredible restraint shown.

I went to elementary school in SoCal and vividly remember nuclear bomb drills.... We had "duck and cover" as if our hands over the back of our heads under a flimsy desk would have afforded any protection. I was in fear for many years of The Bomb. I just imagine the teachers must have been terrified.... I didn't really understand but no doubt they did.

Imagine being there in person only to see this in black & white because color wasn't invented yet...

There is actually only one real color photo of the Trinity blast and that was taken by Enrico Fermi's daughter.

Not using CGI was not really good idea . This scene in the movie could've been 100times more bone chilling

Bomb’s a lot quieter than I expected

Honestly, Nolan should have just used this footage instead of the (much more tame) gasoline explosion we got in the film. It's technically still "practical" and its far more effective at hitting the message home for the audience at the terror unleashed.

Nolan completely failed to make his explosion look anything like this.. his looked like a big gasoline explosion nothing more

I was born in new mexico, my dad grew up there. He said after the war the government bought up hundreds if not thousands of head of cattle on the down wind side of this test that mysteriously were dying, losing their hair, etc. The range was 200 to 300 miles. Go figure.

I love how i tell my friends about how Oppenheimer was and they go "DONT SPOIL IT FOR ME!!!" Like bro, how can i spoil a movie thats based on a story everyone in the world knows about? lol

Looks more intimidating than in the movie i think..m

Horrifying.

why did the one in Oppenheimer look so lame?

I really don't get Christopher Noland didn't put these shots in the Oppenheimer film. They wouldn't have to use science experiments to recreate it (no CGI in this film exept for Eastern regions to censor something) and it would be the most historic accurate.

The fact that people are getting mad about the explosion not looking good enough just goes to show that they only watched Oppenheimer for the explosion and not for his life.

Too bad the movie "Oppenheimer" did such a poor job of reproducing this. Their decision to use minimal CGI ruined the Trinity shot for all of us who have seen this film.

This stunning footage made me really disappointed in how Nolan presented the Trinity test in the film. I was expecting a scientifically detailed recreation. He's managed to deliver something truly fascinating in 'Interstellar', but he's really done something anti-climactic in 'Oppenheimer'. Personally, I would have preferred that he used very-well-done CGI to show the explosion. Test witnesses described interesting details of the explosion. Ralph Carlisle Smith says that he saw a rare purple and green color in the beginning. The silica soil was reported to have turned into radioactive green glass. The explosion narrative felt too anti-climactic.

Oppenheimer's trinity test is disappointing in comparison

The fact that we have not yet all perished is amazing to me.

I have to be honest and say that the end result in the Oppenheimer movie is really underwhelming. That tiny napalm fire ball is nothing close to the majestic scale of a true nuclear mushroom cloud. Nolan should've just used CGI. First Man already proved that well-made CGI can fully restore the magnificence of historical moments. Considering Nolan did use some VFX and removed the artists' names in the credits, the Trinity test explosion in the movie is just inexcusably bad.

Amazing and terrifying!

Are there any records (I assume there are) about what people in the surrounding area (I assume for many miles) thought woke them up? Could they see a glow? Was the area evacuated for those many miles? If so, was there a pretext for it?

The movie oppenheimer really doesnt do it justice.

The bomb in the movie is extremely disappointing, if anything it downplayed the dangers of nuclear weapons

This was better than the whole film it self lol 😅

Nolan could have replicated this with current computer techniques, maybe even blend real footage with cgi or enhance the real thing with computer effects. It would have been much more accurate than the gasoline explosion he pulled off in the movie, which for me was the most disappointed part of the movie (I watched it 3 times already)

I’m a barbie girl in a barbie world

“And now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

The important aspect of nuclear explosions is that they start as brilliant white - almost blue-white - with no yellow tones at all. At this stage the human eye is completely overwhelmed by the brilliance anyway

It’s in our nature to destroy ourselves

I used to own a piece of the green glass it made from the sand a long time ago.

0:20 - "Damn that's a big bomb" 0:26 - "WHAT THE F*CK?!?!"

Nice work on the colorization!

Oppenheimer is a great movie and the build up to the explosion is incredible directing, but the choice to stay 100% practical with the bomb was a mistake. Even if he kept it practical but included this footage somehow it would have made a huge difference, but using cgi for just this one scene would have still kept it classy and timeless. Nolan succeeded in making an impressive fireball, but it’s the half second of light and energy before the fire and smoke which makes the a bomb so terrifying. Nolan almost gets away with it except for one or two unforgivable shots, but it doesn’t do this justice and seeing something like this even for a few seconds would have made the whole movie even more powerful. Cut the first sex scene, and incorporate this footage (or use limited cgi). Otherwise no notes, loved the movie

Oh my god JC a bomb!

0:19 is the best they could recreate in Oppenheimer, but a skinnier part

Oppenheimer movie could have use this clip instead of the nonsense they produced

Although I have not yet had the opportunity to see the timely and relevant Oppenheimer film as yet, I would appreciate the opportunity to share a few thoughts about the "nuclear age." Given that the Cuban Missile Crisis took place in the latter half of October, 1962, this event thereby occured while I was six months developing in my Mother's womb. Within a mere three additional months, in April of 1963, I was soon to be jettisoned into a continuously and rapidly changing world of increasingly dangerous and risky situations. I have often wondered what my Mother might have experienced during those frightening and threatening days in October of 1962. Sadly, I didn't have the opportunity to ever ask her prior to the confrontational dissolution of our relationship. I regret both. I have also wondered what effects her higher stress levels might have had upon the growing human settled relatively peacefully within her abdomen. Was I affected in some way? Obviously, I will never know. What I do know, however, is that I was undoubtedly impacted at the cellular level by the residual isotopes present in the Great Lakes Basin released and spread to this area by the earlier atmospheric nuclear testing by the American Government, and additionally those of the Soviet Union. A recent article suggested that the previously understood area of North America that was contaminated, albeit at relatively low levels, was far broader in scope and area than previously understood covering three quarters of North America! Most or all of us carry within us tiny traces of radiation encountered through various avenues of dissemination to this day, or such is my current understanding. Nevertheless, having been born into the nuclear age at an earlier stage of its continuing development, the first earlier years of my life were built upon foundations of knowledge and experience untainted by the realization of the potentiality of instantaneous nuclear annihilation. It was only when I arrived at the latter end of my childhood prior to the beginning of my adolescence, that I vaguely recall seeing a movie which portrayed a nuclear war crisis. I am unable to recall much more than that. Suffice to say, that it caused me quite a stir, so to speak. I was never quite the same again. My previous perceptions were altered, in some ways, in fact, extinguished by the realization that reality was not as it had previously appeared to be. Following this, my then already disordant and unpredictable family situation grew yet more chaotic and difficult. My parents separated and I was mostly left to my own devices in my attempts to make sense of it all and to cope with the unfolding personal catastrophe. The earlier comprehensions pertaining to the frightening possibilities surrounding the existence of nuclear weapons in increasing numbers within the context of the "Cold War" were soon forgotten for many years. It was during my later years of university studies that I came across a conflict related philosophy course. It opened my eyes in new ways to understandings of such things heretofore unrealized. It was also disturbing. It was then, that I became utterly incapable of overlooking the reality of such weapons and their potentially horrifically destructive effects. Through the years during times of considerable distress, I would sometimes experience nightmares where, while in the middle of something, usually outside, during the daytime, a blue sky sort of day, there would be a strangely mechanical "whooshing" sound in the sky just prior to a bright flash and a subsequent loss of vision but at the same time, a deafening silence given the variation between the speed of light and the speed of sound. As a result, the concussive waves arrived simultaneously with the loudest bang to ever be heard momentarily prior to being instantaneously incinerated. I would always wake up from these visions of a singular reality within my overwhelmed mind's eye in a state of utter torpidity and terror. It was usually difficult to fall back asleep with any ease. Since such times, I have watched several films incorporating story lines and narratives showing the horrific possibilities if ever such weapons were to be again used on large populations of humans. As a result, there are images of monstrous destruction from such films as Terminator 2 that have often revisited me since. It is a rather unusual and strange aspect of life when, aside from the conventional "ups and downs" of life, that one is continuously aware of the possibility of having everything suddenly interrupted by the actions of an insane person within the ranks of an insane government somewhere who thought that the utilization of such a weapon could somehow be momentarily beneficial to their cause. It is conjecture surely to be proven invalid and entirely one of the worst decisions in human history. Continuous stress, while remaining almost invisible, can nonetheless be damaging to both the human physiology, but sadly, and more congruently, the healthy functioning of the humanly aspirational mind. This I have known for far too long. It broke my spirit, in some respects. But it also clarified my inward comprehension of the reality within which I found myself to reside in. It both weakened me, and yet, also inspired me to pay closer attention to "moments of time." They are always fleeting and momentary but always interesting if one can learn to "slow down enough" to readily observe them, either through meditation or some such activity or by simply paying sufficient attention to them. In any case, my resultant sense of fragility of existence itself has never left me. The existence of nuclear weapons created this within me. It brought me closer to Nature in ways that I never could have imagined. Strangely enough, they strengthened me. I have never really "accepted" them, per ce. But I have learned to never forget that they are out there sitting in silos or in submarines or on land transport vehicles, always ready to do the unthinkable. I find it rather intriguing, the seeming similarities between how humans treat each other in terms of the potential usage of such horrific weapons and our treatment of Nature. There is a particular callousness synonymous with both phenomena, a certain shroud of darkness lingering in the air, and a pall of unpredictability impossible to shake off. We deny the existence of nuclear weapons and of the climate crisis at our peril. Denialism can be a pain of supreme proportions. Thus, I can only remain vigilant, always slightly anxious, but also always aware of the magnificent beauty of Life itself, its poignancy, and its fragility. How briefly we are here in this Earthly Paradise that we threaten with our maleficent technologies and our egotistical tendencies. Whatever shall we do? Heartfelt respect and hugs all around to each of you during these challenging times.

Imagine being one of the people involved in this. You could have been proud or ashamed. I do not know which one will.

I realized a lot of people do not know how the trinity test footage looked like... one was arguing that the "black smoke" in Oppenheimer was nonsense... but here I see this: 0:51

but instead we got a gasoline explosion

What’s the difference between the first explosion and this one 0:26 ?

Just to inform everyone this is footage from two different cameras using different lenses and not a progression of one explosion. At 0:24 there is a cut to a different camera.