How much do you know about nukes?

The United States entered the nuclear age on July 16, 1945 when the first nuclear bomb known as "The Gadget" was successfully detonated at Trinity Site in New Mexico at 5:29 a.m. local time.

Trinity was a proof test of the plutonium-fueled "Fat Man" implosion bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, 24 days later. This was the culmination of work that began in 1940 under the Manhattan Project. Locally, the Metallurgical Lab, now Argonne National Laboratory, played a critical role in the genesis of that project.

In the 70 years since Trinity, the U.S. has spent over $5.8 trillion on nuclear weapons programs, built about 70,000 warheads of 65 different types, and currently spends about $56 billion annually to maintain the roughly 7,000 warheads that remain in the nuclear stockpile.

The Cold War ended 23 years ago yet we still maintain 400 nuclear-armed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles on launch-ready alert, a potentially dangerous status since these are seen as "use or lose" or first strike weapons.

The average person really does not know much about nuclear weapons, policies or warfare, their history and potential to radically change our world in one afternoon. If it does not affect them within the next 30 minutes, most people simply don't care.

With this being the 70th anniversary of the birth of nuclear weapons, and especially with the political frenzy over Iran's nuclear ambitions, it is time for us to face these weapons of mass destruction head on through public education and discussion.

The DuPage Coffee House will present pictorial history of nuclear weapons which explores various aspects of those weapons from 1940 to the present on Aug. 5. This presentation is open to the public. For more information and signup, go to www.dupagecoffeehouse.org.

Bob Farquhar

Villa Park