#los alamos

[thefearandnow]

So with Oppenheimer coming out tomorrow, I feel a certain level of responsibility to share some important resources for people to understand more about the context of the Manhattan Project. Because for my family, it’s not just a piece of history but an ongoing struggle that’s colonized and irradiated generations of New Mexicans’ lives and altered our identity forever. Not only has the legacy of the Manhattan Project continued to harm and displace Indigenous and Hispanic people but it’s only getting bigger: Biden recently tasked the Los Alamos National Lab facility to create 30 more plutonium pits (the core of a nuclear warhead) by 2026. So this is a list of articles, podcasts and books to check out to hear the real stories of the local people living with this unique legacy that’s often overlooked. 

This is simply the latest mainstream interest in the Oppenheimer story and it always ALWAYS silences the trauma of the brown people the US government took advantage of to make their death star. I might see the movie, I honestly might not. I’m not trying to judge anyone for seeing what I’m sure will be an entertaining piece of art. I just want y’all to leave the theater knowing that this story goes beyond what’s on the screen and touches real people’s lives: people whose whole families died of multiple cancers from radiation from the Trinity test, people who’s ancestral lands were poisoned, people who never came back from their job because of deadly work conditions. This is our story too.

The first and best place to learn more about this history and how to support those still resisting is to follow Tewa Women United. They’ve assembled an incredible list of resources from the people who’ve been fighting this fight the longest.

https://tewawomenunited.org/2023/07/oppenheimer-and-the-other-side-of-the-story

The writer Alicia Inez Guzman is currently writing a series about the nuclear industrial complex in New Mexico, its history and cultural impacts being felt today.

https://searchlightnm.org/my-nuclear-family/

https://searchlightnm.org/the-abcs-of-a-nuclear-education/

https://searchlightnm.org/plutonium-by-degrees/

Danielle Prokop at Source NM is an excellent reporter (and friend) who has been covering activists fighting for Downwinder status from the federal government. They’re hoping that the success of Oppenheimer will bring new attention to their cause.

https://sourcenm.com/2023/07/19/anger-hope-for-nm-downwinders/

https://sourcenm.com/2022/01/27/new-mexico-downwinders-demand-recognition-justice/

One often ignored side of the Manhattan Project story that’s personal for me is that the government illegally seized the land that the lab facilities eventually were built on. Before 1942, it was homesteading land for ranchers for more than 30 families (my grandpa’s side of the family was one). But when the location was decided, the government evicted the residents, bought their land for peanuts and used their cattle for target practice. Descendants of the homesteaders later sued and eventually did get compensated for their treatment (though many say it was far below what they were owed)

https://www.hcn.org/issues/175/5654

Myrriah Gomez is an incredible scholar in this field, working as a historian, cultural anthropologist and activist using a framework of “nuclear colonialism” to foreground the Manhattan Project. Her book Nuclear Nuevo Mexico is an amazing collection of oral stories and archival record that positions New Mexico’s era of nuclear colonialism in the context of its Spanish and American eras of colonialism. A must read for anyone who’s made it this far.

https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/nuclear-nuevo-mexico

There isn’t a ton of podcasts about this (yet 👀) but recently the Washington Post’s podcast Field Trip did an episode about White Sands National Monument. The story is a beautifully written and sound designed piece that spotlights the Downwinder activists and also a discovery of Indigenous living in the Trinity test area going back thousands of years. I was blown away by it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/field-trip/white-sands-national-park/

#oppenheimer #oppenheimer movie #barbenheimer #manhattan project #new mexico #los alamos #I never do posts like this #but I felt compelled #theres just so much like nuclear worship going on right now

[adventurealldays]

Mountain lion kitten attacking mom, Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico. NPS photo.

#nature #mountains #hiking #landscape #new mexico #los alamos #bandelier #mountain lion #wildlife #NPS photo

[soos-idae]

got tickets to both Barbie and Oppenheimer yesterday, proud to say I survived barbenheimer

Last picture credits to @falconsnat on twitter

#barbenheimer #barbie #barbie 2023 #oppenheimer #trinity test #los alamos #margot robbie #ryan gosling #greta gerwig #christopher nolan #cillian murphy #florence pugh #robert downey jr #matt damon #emily blunt

[pogphotoarchives]

"In the Valle", Los Alamos Ranch School, Los Alamos, New Mexico

Photographer: T. Harmon Parkhurst

Date: 1925 - 1942?

Negative Number: 001135

#los alamos #new mexico #horses #valles caldera

[aphroditeslover11]

Oppie at Los Alamos, side by side!

#oppenheimer #american prometheus #cillian murphy #oppenheimer x reader #christopher nolan #1950s #cillian murphy x reader #oppie #j robert oppenheimer x reader #los alamos #world war second #world war 2 #atomic bomb #history

[knightgazes]

“They will fear it until they understand it, and they won’t understand it until they’ve used it.” 

OPPENHEIMER (2023)

dir. Christopher Nolan

#oppenheimer #Christopher nolan #universal pictures #IMAX #Cillian murphy #Emily blunt #robert downey jr #florence pugh #jack quaid #movies #films #history #war #ww2 #wwII #movie gifs #j. robert oppenheimer #physics #atomic bomb #los alamos #robert oppenheimer #manhattan project #american prometheus #Emma thomas #gifs #filmgifs #cinematography #film gifs #mygifstag

[odinsblog]

Oppenheimer

#oppenheimer #whitewashing history #robert oppenheimer #tiktok #american history #los alamos #atomic bombs #nuclear weapons #nuclear bombs

[lockvogel]

White Rock / Los Alamos, New Mexico

White Rock Overlook and surrounding area

#Rio Grande #Los Alamos #New Mexico #original photography #photographers on tumblr #landscape photography #road trip #roadtrip #vacation #vacation 2023 #nature #geology #mine #white rock overlook #White Rock #American Southwest

[60zcowboy]

behind the scenes of fat man & little boy pt1

#most of it is cusack funnily enough #fat man and little boy (1989) #fat man and little boy #john cusack #los alamos #michael merriman #oppenheimer #j robert oppenheimer #paul newman #laura dern #dwight schultz #60zcowboyposting

[denimbex1986]

'Before I saw the Barbie movie, I was resolutely against ever seeing the Barbie movie. Despite the fact that as a child I loved Barbie, who I interviewed regularly for important radio segments in her coral peach ball gown, I decided that the last thing I needed was 90 neon-coloured-Margot-Robbie-filled minutes of a film which would obviously have nothing new to offer me; a grown-up feminist woman who stopped idealising the problematic Barbie aesthetic decades ago.

But then the reviews from angry men started rolling in. You only had to be vaguely near the internet after Barbie’s release to hear the resounding roars of the mostly middle-aged; outraged that such an abomination against “all men” could even be allowed to exist. The reviews began to read like dreamy promotional soundbites: “An alienating, dangerous and perverse film”, “They won’t be happy until we are all gay”.

These men were really, really wound up about this film. They loathed it. They were spitting fury at Greta Gerwig for creating a piece of such obvious, glaring, “anti-men, feminist propaganda”.

And so, when I was asked by one of my teenage children if I would be up for a day of “Barbenheimer”, I said “yes”: newly salivating at the potential of a project that could cause this much delicious backlash.

I decided I would swallow my aversion towards sustained exposure to powder pink, get Barbie watched, then chase it all away with a good dose of brooding grey, historically accurate cinema. Despite the promise of those furious reviews, I still expected to enter and exit the cinema despising Barbie and in awe of Oppenheimer.

During the five hours of media and popcorn consumption that followed, a chain reaction set in motion that left me changed. It made the vitriolic reviews of Barbie, calling Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece “anti-men”, even more comical. The irony was bright and clear to me: Oppenheimer is anti-women.

And the thing is that Oppenheimer is not different to most films. Because most films are anti-women.

We just don’t take to the internet to rage about it because we’re used to it; desensitised by the decades of cinematic women who exist only to paint their lips red, bare their breasts and give the important male protagonists something to play with.

Is Barbie anti-men? Oh, I hope so (it isn’t, it’s anti-patriarchy), but also, frankly, I don’t care. Because if it is – after decades of movies made by male directors like Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan, it has good reason to be.

And it does what it so brilliantly does within the sparkly, imaginary bubble of an entirely fictional world where the male characters it side-lines are literally plastic dolls, all called Ken (except Alan); fake toys who simply can’t even breathe. Anti-women films like Oppenheimer on the other hand, sideline or completely erase very real, flesh-and-blood women who lived whole lives and made significant contributions to our world.

So, if you’re a man who has watched Barbie and felt angry or irritated or just plain strange while watching the depiction and treatment of the Kens – then welcome to cinema. That is what it feels like to be a woman watching Hollywood movies most of the time.

But here’s the thing – that poor Ken doll you’re lamenting over, is not Leona Woods; who at 23 was one of the youngest female scientists the Manhattan project employed. Ken, unlike Leona, was not present at the first nuclear chain reaction and Ken did not have to do what Leona did – which was to conceal her pregnancy until two days before her baby was born. Ken is also not Elizabeth Graves; a scientist entirely essential to the project’s success who was completing an experiment when she went into labour and did not stop the experiment until it was finished, timing her contractions with a stopwatch. Let’s see Christopher Nolan make a three-hour-long film about that.

Neither Woods nor Graves feature in Oppenheimer, which, like so many anti-women films, manages to assume such an air of authority that it can leave us assuming that its astounding lack of female representation must be down to its admirable commitment to historical accuracy. I’ve heard the cries – “It is called Oppenheimer after all. How much do you expect it to worry about its women?” And perhaps it’s true – you can’t very well expect a film about the very intelligent physicists who tackled the science behind creating the atomic bomb to change facts just for representation can you?

No. But you can and should expect such a film to accurately and fairly represent the female scientists who were, in fact, right there – alongside Oppenheimer and his men, ensuring the Manhattan Project’s success. Perhaps it might have been appropriate if viewers left the three-hour epic clear in the knowledge that Kitty Oppenheimer didn’t only drink herself to distraction while taking care of screaming children and dropping a hip flask out of her handbag at every possible moment; she was also a trained botanist who was employed at Los Alamos to take blood and test the levels of radiation exposure of her colleagues.

More than 600 women worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos alone, yet the only female scientist given any recognition in Nolan’s world is Lilli Hornig, who speaks only briefly, mostly in opposition to the bomb’s use. And what about Charlotte Serber? Who Nolan depicts as Oppenheimer’s secretary, completely erasing her vital work as scientific librarian for the project’s “secret library” and who, with no formal training, became the only female group leader, overseeing a staff of 12 people while also risking her safety in counter-espionage efforts.

Oppenheimer doesn’t only fail the Bechdel test, it fails to represent the real women who contributed so significantly to that morally fraught turning point in history. Those women were physicists, engineers, chemists, mathematicians. They existed. And, as is so often the case, many of their achievements have been forgotten and remain unrecognised, by both history and cinema.

As I continue to emerge from my Barbenheimer experience, researching the lost women of the Manhattan project and occasionally still basking in the disgust of all those angry men who need to hate the work of art that is Barbie, it becomes ever clearer: anti-women is the benchmark of mainstream filmmaking and some people are simply unable to deal with the plastic Manolo Blahnik being on the other foot.'

#Barbenheimer #Oppenheimer #Barbie #Margot Robbie #Greta Gerwig #Leona Woods #Elizabeth Graves #The Manhattan Project #Kitty Oppenheimer #Los Alamos #Lilli Hornig #Charlotte Serber

[cigarettesandcoffee1904]

Happy birthday to Robert Oppenheimer who would be 120 today!

22/04/1904

#j robert oppenheimer #oppenheimer #oppie #robert oppenheimer #american prometheus #los alamos #manhattan project #history

[ademella]

Los Alamos, New Mexico

February 2024

Alysa DeMella

#photo #landscape #winter #mountains #sangre de cristo #Santa Fe baldy #New Mexico #desert #southwest #Los Alamos #photography

[adventurealldays]

#nature #mountains #hiking #landscape #new mexico #forest #los alamos #bayo canyon

[blackswaneuroparedux]

I... a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.

- Richard Feyneman

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was an American theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 1965. Robert Wilson recruited the brilliant young Feynman, only 24 at the time, for the Manhattan Project as a junior physicist soon after completing his Ph.D.  At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to the theoretical division of Hans Bethe, and soon became a group leader. Feynman was briefly transferred to the Oak Ridge facility, where he aided engineers in calculating safety procedures for material storage so that inadvertent criticality accidents could be avoided. He was well known for playfully challenging the security at Los Alamos, and was present for the Trinity test in 1945, viewing the explosion through his truck windshield.

After the Manhattan Project, Feynman regretted not reconsidering his work after Germany was defeated in World War II, although he continued to feel that the threat of a nuclear-armed Nazi Germany was enough to justify his initial participation. He turned down an offer from the Institute for Advanced Study and joined Hans Bethe at Cornell from 1945 to 1950, where he taught theoretical physics. Feynman left to join the faculty at Caltech in 1950. There he conducted his groundbreaking research in areas of quantum electrodynamics and superfluidity.

Feynman won his 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics, a formula well known for its accurate predictions, which combines his path integral formulation and his Feynman diagrams. Additionally, he worked in the fields of the physics of superfluidity and quantum gravity, and developed a model of weak decay. However he caused great controversy when shortly after winning the prize in 1965, he seemingly rejected it. Feynman increasingly felt unease at the award turning the scientists into an institution.

It was no strange thing for Feynman to offer an opinion contrary to authority. Often called a buffoon and a magician, Feynman was scolded by the scientific world for his pursuit of things outside science, like art and music. A series of televised lecturers for the public secured his place in the households of millions in the US and the rest of the world. It was here that his excitement and passion for science trickled into the popular psyche and admitted countless young people into the world of science. He loved science and its limitless possibilities of discovery; it is no surprise, then, that he viewed his Nobel Prize with indifference.

#feyneman #richard feyneman #quote #physicist #scientist #nobel prize in physics #nobel laureate #american #caltech #los alamos #nuclear #atom bomb #manhattan project #science #university

[emotionalcadaver]

Lauren's Oppenheimer Set at Ghost Ranch Photo Dump

#again apologies for the shit photography #laur babbles #laur travel posting #oppenheimer #ghost ranch #los alamos

[aphroditeslover11]

The Feynman Affair

Here is the result of the poll from the other day.

A/N: As usual, everybody in this is fictionalised and based on the performances of the actors in the Nolan movie, if you don’t want to read this I am not forcing you so please simply scroll on. I am not brooking any arguments, most of us on here are just doing are here for fun, not confrontation. If you do want to read it however, welcome, I promise I’m not always this grumpy!

Warnings: period typical attitudes, alcohol consumption, suspicion of adultery, angst but a happy ending.

Your relationship with Robert was the best thing that could ever have happened to either of you, though you both acknowledged that it was bizarre in its beginnings. You were a political science student at Berkeley that he had met just before the war had started and whisperings had begun about he production of the ‘gadget’. You had hit things off really quickly and when Groves started talking about moving work to a more secure, remote facility Oppie knew immediately that he wanted to keep you by his side. He asked you to marry him shortly after that, having taken you to New Mexico to spend a few days just the pair of you at his ranch Perro Caliente. He was open with you about what was going to happen next in his life and that he knew Groves would let you nowhere near the project unless you were a married couple. You were anxious at first, Robert was a lot older than you and at a far more advanced stage of life, you also knew that you were going to have to put your studies on hold and the idea of becoming his little housewife was fairly unappealing to you. You kept all of these concerns to yourself though, knowing that if you said no that you wouldn’t see him for a very long time, which was the last thing that you wanted to happen.

Your differences were never really much of an issue, you had mixed in similar circles at Berkeley and he continued to make sure that you got involved in things at Los Alamos. He was far from controlling or misogynistic, getting you a job as an administrative assistant to help organise the chaos of the laboratory, hell, he even cooked on a regular basis. He made it perfectly clear to everyone that you were to be considered as his equal, an extension of him that was to be treated with the same respect. Robert did his best to make sure that you rarely felt marginalised due to your age or sex, little did you know this was because he was nervous that he was too old and out of touch, you were spending a lot of time working with younger men and he was beginning to feel a little threatened. He made sure that his insecurities stayed a long way away from you though, after all you never gave him any reasons to worry.

~

You were starting to spend more time with a young physicist called Richard Feynman, Oppie has seen something in him and gone to great efforts to bring him onto the project. He was in his mid twenties, close to you in age, and a gifted conversationalist. Judging by the gaggle of women that usually surrounded him, Robert also judged that he was considered fairly attractive by the opposite sex. Though Feynman had a wife who was currently in a hospital in Albuquerque and suffering from tuberculosis, this did little to settle his nerves. You always used to spend your lunchtimes together, you’d eat whatever sandwich you had made that morning, Robert substituting any food with a cigarette as had become his habit (which you hated). You had missed a few of these recently though because you “Got stuck in a meeting with Dick, he was having a rant about Groves, you know how we all feel about him.” Though he hated to admit it Robert was beginning to feel something more than just anxiety, he was jealous. Why did Feynman suddenly deserve to spend so much time with you when he was losing out on it? Did you find him boring and deliberately avoid him? Why had he even gone to the effort of talking this bastard into coming here in the first place?

~

Over the next few weeks things calmed down a bit. Robert had spoken to Rabi about his concerns, he was one of the few of Oppie’s friends who could tell him outright when he was being ridiculous and he had done so.

“But are you sure that she isn’t tiring of me?” He had said one morning, sitting in his office in the middle of a rare catch-up with his visiting friend and advisor.

“Oppie, don’t be such a fool. Y/n loves you, she still looks at you the same way she did when you signed your marriage certificate. Besides, Richard loves his wife just as much as you love y/n, he would never have an affair. You’re worrying about nothing.”

“You don’t think it’s my age, she doesn’t feel that I’m boring now that we’re living together?”

“No, but if that’s your worry then do something exciting. Have a party for your 39th and invite everyone, including Feynman. Prove to her that you can still enjoy yourself.” Oppie paused for a moment in thought before replying.

“Thanks Rab, I think I will.”

~

That was where he was now, a big party to celebrate his 39th birthday. Everybody was milling around, locked in various conversations. He had no idea how many martinis he had made that evening and the atmosphere was beginning to become a little more chaotic, the alcohol hitting everyone more quickly than they expected due to the altitude. You had been by his side for most of the night, sitting next to him for the meal and having your first dance of the evening with him, allowing him to lead you around in his favourite foxtrot even if you did tease him about being a bit behind the times. You admitted that you loved his old-fashioned foibles though, you said that it made you feel special. The event only started to go sideways after you and he had got involved in a group discussion, it had inevitably turned scientific and his attention was immediately focused on Rabi and his last posed question. He hadn’t noticed that you had left part-way through the discussion, now being nowhere to be seen.

Rabi twigged his friend looking around the room, noticing quickly himself what was missing. He also noted the Richard Feynman was nowhere to be seen.

“If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to go and fix myself another martini,” Robert said, downing the dregs of his previous one and walking in the direction of the kitchen.

“I think I’ll follow him, make sure that he doesn’t get lost on the way,” joked Rabi, following closely behind the host.

As soon as the pair made it to the kitchen Robert burst into an uncharacteristic rage.

“I knew that something was going on, I should have done something to stop her sooner, I just didn’t want to believe it. I could forgive her if she had been discreet about it, but really? On my birthday?”

“Oppie, calm down. I know that y/n and Feynman are both gone, but we don’t know where. They might not even be together.

“Well, where else do you think they could be then?” Even the level headed Isidor was having to admit that the prospect of your affair was becoming increasingly likely. The men suddenly heard movement from the room above them. Your bedroom.

At that moment there was nothing to stop Robert from tearing up the stairs, his friend in tow. He threw open the door to find you and Richard sat side by side on the bed, hunched over something between you with your backs to him. You both snapped around at the bang or your husband’s entry.

“Mr Feynman, would you care to tell me what you are doing in my bedroom with my wife?” God, you had never seen your husband this angry, he was positively seething.

“Dr Oppenheimer, I can assure you that nothing untoward is going on, we were merely…”

“Well, something certainly seems to be going on, don’t you thing Rab?” Robert cut him off.

“Robert, this is none of my business, I’m going to go back down to the party. I’ll keep everyone entertained so that you can take as long as you need up here.” He patted his friend on the shoulder in support, closing the door as he left.

“Now, I want to hear the truth. I’ve had my suspicions about you both for a while, but I suppose at least now I know for certain. Some birthday present.” Dick was trying to be a gentleman and take the brunt of your husband’s onslaught, you were trying to discreetly move the piece of paper that you had both been looking at.

“Sir, honestly, man to man, nothing is going on between me and your wife, I would never even want to touch her.” Oppie raised his eyebrows at that.

“So you fuck my wife and then have the balls to insult her. Stylish Feynman.”

“That came out wrong, I meant that I would never want to do something like that to my wife, I would never dream of jeopardising my marriage.”

“And yet you are happy to destroy mind?”

“Um… no, I…” you rolled your eyes at Dick, he was making everything so much worse than it already was.

“Shut up, you’re just making things harder you idiot.” Richard happily did as he was told.

“Robert, this wasn’t how I wanted you to find out, but…”

“So you are sleeping with him then?”

“No, would you please let me finish?” Robert had nothing to say to that, so your carried on. “For the last few months me and Richard have been working on something for your birthday. He and his wife write letters to one another, but they do it in code so that Groves and his idiots can’t understand it, they’re so thick that they still haven’t managed to figure it out. I know how much you miss your brother, so we managed to get some friends to ask Frank to write to you. Richard had his wife put it into code and send it to him so that you could receive it on your birthday. We came in here so that he could give me the decoded version to surprise you with later. Obviously you have ruined that, so you might as well have it now.” You walked over to Robert, holding the paper out to him. He was completely dumbstruck.

“I suppose I owe you both an apology then.” You knew how much Robert would hate having to put his pride to one side and admit that he was wrong. “Feynman, I’m sorry for doubting you and thank you for helping my wife.”

“No worries Oppie, I understand. I’ll leave the pair of you to it.” He stood from the bed, shaking his boss’s hand before exiting, still visibly shaken.

Robert immediately reached out to you, taking you in his arms.

“Love, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, I was just nervous that you had grown bored of me and Feynman could have given you so many this that I don’t have.”

“Like what Robert?”

“Youth for one.” You suddenly started to laugh.

“What’s funny, why are you laughing?”

“You idiot Rob, did you really think I would have married you if your age was that important to me? If it will make you less nervous in the future, you should know that I prefer my men older, they tend to cause less problems. I would never even dream of having an affair.” Your husband relinquished his grip on you then, letting you move back to face him. His face was awash with shame.

“Can we forget that this ever happened? I just want things to go back to how they used to be.”

“I think that sounds like a very good idea,” you acquiesced. “Let’s leave that letter up here, put it under my pillow where I was going to hide it and I’ll give it to you later like I was planning to. Then we can head downstairs and pretend that this little incident never happened.” Robert did as you suggested, wrapping an arm around your waist before leading you out onto the landing.

“Oh, one more thing before we go back down. You can’t tell anybody about that letter or we’ll all be arrested.” Robert huffed at that.

“What on earth am I going to tell Rabi?” You chuckled at his deserved misfortune, kissing him on the cheek as you headed back down the stairs.

“That’s up to you, but it had better be something good!”

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy x reader #oppenheimer #1950s #american prometheus #oppenheimer x reader #christopher nolan #tommy shelby #peaky blinders #fanfic #j robert oppenheimer x reader #j robert oppenheimer #tumblr polls #angst with a happy ending #angst #affair #los alamos