Once Upon a Time at Stagg Field

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CP-1 Under Construction - Layer 10
    December 2nd 1942. The Atomic Era was ushered in by the first self-sustaining man-made nuclear reaction in Chicago Pile-1, assembled under the west stands of Stagg Field football stadium at the University of Chicago. The experiment was devised by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and represented the first step towards the development of atomic power generation and of course, the Atomic Bomb.

Enrico Fermi
    The push for the Bomb to be realised was made all the more urgent five days later when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and drew the United States into the Second World War.
    The outcome of the work that followed led to the dropping of the thus far only two nuclear weapons deployed in anger, killing thousands of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
     In the years following, the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union escalating, new and far more powerful thermonuclear weapons were tested - infamously including the first successful Hydrogen Bomb detonation on Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific in 1952.
Discovered in the debris of the explosion was a newly identified element, subsequently named Fermium after Enrico Fermi, who died just after I was born in 1954, which brings us to the crux of this tortuous post. The atomic number of Fermium is 100 and this my 100th post since starting this blog as lockdown began to kick in. Seems like a very long time ago. It's just nine weeks. And given the shambles that is our Governments' handling of the situation, this could go on for a very long time.

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