This is one of several famous photographs taken of the first ever nuclear detonation. Conducted by the U.S. Army on July 16, 1945, in the White Sands Proving Ground (located in the Jornada del Muerto desert, about 35 miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico), the setting off of this “implosion-design plutonium device” (the same method used in the “Fat Man” device dropped on Nagasaki) ushered in the Atomic Age and the eventual arms race between the United States and Russia.

Only a handful of people were aware that this photo was cropped before it was ever released to the public and they are all now dead. One of them was the original photographer, who gave the author a copy of the original on the condition that it be kept out of the public eye until such a time that the citizens of the world could handle the ramifications of what it depicts. The author remains uncertain whether this criteria has been met, but given that he likely owns the last extant copy, he has decided his responsibility rests with the truth.