Las Vegas, Nevada

February 22, 1951

Sixty-five miles to the north-west a B-50 Superfortress trundled through the sky on the return leg of its mission, the crescendo of the Ranger test series-- Ranger-Fox. The Mark 6 bomb, an improved development of the "Fat Man" device that had destroyed Nagasaki six years ago, had exploded with tremendous fury over the Nevada desert, watched by various members of the United States Air Force and the nuclear scientific community. They would determine the bomb's yield to be 22 kilotons.

It was watched, however, by another crowd.

In nearby Las Vegas, casino promoters had devised a new marketing scheme: they were beginning to explore the notion of nuclear tourism. On rooftops along Fremont Street people gathered around noon. The casinos served "atomic" cocktails and had live music acts play while the clock ticked away. Then, at 1:30pm, the music cut out and people were directed towards where the bomb would be going off.

Four minutes ticked by at an interminable rate. Then, the sky turned to night for an instant as the distant Mark 6 bomb exploded. There was silence as the flash faded, and once the dome of the infamous mushroom cloud rose above the hills and into the sky the assembled crowd began to cheer and applaud. Onlookers tracked the cloud as it ascended as high as 40,000 feet, slowly dissipating.

Las Vegas began to develop an interesting relationship with the Nevada Test Site. Promoters were eager for more news from the Department of Defense, who provided test dates and times that were swiftly committed to atomic-themed calendars and postcards. Larger, less ad-hoc events were on the schedule for the Buster-Jangle test series in October 1951.

As nuclear tension continued to develop in geopolitics, the threat of annihilation by the Soviets with similar devices had not wholly crept into the public consciousness. The tourists on the rooftops treated these nuclear tests as a sort of massive fireworks display. A strange moment had washed upon Las Vegas in advance of the fear of the bomb that would soon follow-- for now, however, the casinos and hotels would cash in in a big way.