The Bomb's Sonic Trace
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Searching for any record of the sound a nuclear detonation makes
plain
2021-07-16T11:10:25-07:00
It is surprisingly difficult to find audio recordings of nuclear detonations. Once you realize that most every mushroom cloud sequence you've seen relies on sound edited from other sources, then the search becomes more specific to the medium or device at hand. For example, here's a track titled "Atomic Bomb Explosion" from an LP the Air Force released as part of recruitment efforts in the 1950s:
Heard on its own without images, the sound immediately raises questions. What is to distinguish this sound from all manner of other loud things, including the sound of wind on a sensitive microphone? What gives us trust that this is truly the sound of an event as historic as an atomic explosion? Maybe we listen for evidence of its authenticity. Perhaps for you, the crackle of the LP and the quality of the recording itself evidence historicity, age – a kind of archival aura. But then again, the appearance of this sound in a recruitment aid may introduce doubts. For what is the military recruitment process – especially for a branch of the armed forces fairly new in the making in the 1950s – but an invitation to fantasy, to projecting oneself into a space of privileged access to powerful and secret technology? Maybe the aspiring cadet wants this recording to be the real deal.
A slightly later recording released in 1962 gives us a bit more to go on. We hear a little more detail and space in the recording– a crack at the beginning that rolls out before encountering a deeper rumble that moves on and on. As the deep roll continues unaltered, we may begin to suspect the sound has been doctored. Or maybe, with the length of this rumble, our concern rises over the power it conveys. In any case, at least it is not rising in volume, but stays safely under a listenable, recordable threshold. We are at a safe distance. The engineer pots down at the end to give us an easy exit. Text on the LP sleeve describes the recording and mastering process without any mention of the subjects at hand, focused instead on how the producers employed "maximum care to avoid any losses or accumulation of extraneous sounds of whatever nature."
Scouring films of nuclear blasts for examples that promise a true record of the sound at hand, very few emerge. One very rare example found in the U.S. National Archives is an unedited film of a 1953 desert test, shot from a ten-mile distance from ground zero, among other press covering the "Annie" shot. The blast it documents, part of the larger Upshot-Knothole series, is probably the most famous of desert detonations, given the number of images it produced for popular consumption in civil defense films and other propaganda. This film may in fact document the same test included on the 1962 LP above, given its stated location at Yucca Flat. Watching at length is instructive, but you can jump to 2:30 to catch the most relevant sequence. (Note that the camera exposure is quite dark, but bear with it.)
A number of things contribute to the believability of this sequence, making it one of the most convincing sonic records of an atomic blast. The low number of edits and cuts, the casual voice of the cameraman announcing the shot at the beginning, the incidental sounds of people all around all support our understanding of this record as truly evidentiary. In place of the customary music we so associate with such sequences, we get the emotional exclamations of nearby observers, barely discernible but standing in for us in their marveling. But several things are of special note here about the sound of the blast itself.
First, we hear the countdown. This element is something we'll see is common to the bomb's sonic footprint not only for its content and delivery – always male, measured, monotone – but for the space we hear in the voice, its mediation through a loudspeaker, and the reverberation of its bounce across the space of witness. The spatial depth of that countdown's mix invites us in to the scene.
Second, we hear a delay. The sound of the blast doesn't reach us for some time after our initial blinding by the blast. (If you listen close, you even hear the announcer preparing onlookers for the boom's arrival.) Just as the reverb of the announcer's voice places us in a specific space, the blast sound's delayed arrival helps us understand our safe distance from the center of destruction. Images of atomic fireballs and mushroom clouds that roll out in strict sync with their cracks, booms, and rumbles are, like so much sound in film, a form of illusion. Such tricks in this case do more than close the distance between us and the bomb - they allow us to pretend that such distance doesn't matter, to forget our bodies and the threat the bomb represents to them.
Third, in this sequence we hear one sound that is not delayed - an uncanny sonic shiver, audible just as the fireball forms. Our mind searches for explanations for this ghostly thing, which seems to be evidence of something almost sub-audible. To experience anything in sync with that blinding light is fearsome - as if something has reached out across the distance to touch us after all. Maybe it's the recording equipment registering the vibration of the ground itself, as the medium of earth outpaces that of air in the conveying of waves. We might wonder if it's something spectral, unexplainable, like so many atomic phenomena.
History holds at least one other similar record, captured a few years earlier, and from much farther away. On April 22, 1952, Los Angeles television station KTLA broadcast a live feed of the "Charlie" test of the Tumbler-Snapper series in Nevada. Whereas the footage of the 1953 Annie test came from a mere ten miles from ground zero, this earlier view came from another 40 miles further away atop Mount Charleston. Again here we hear the echoing announcer, the delayed arrival of the blast, and – now even more uncannily, given the greater distance – a strange register of something other than audible sound at the very moment of detonation. Listen for the click at about :43, which again suggests that the camera and the distant mysterious event are more connected than we might wish.
The prominent role of human voices in supporting authenticity in these two examples takes us finally to the sole extant audio-only record of individuals witnessing a nuclear test in an official capacity. This audio recording appeared around 2012, first shared by special effects expert Peter Kuran as part of his larger efforts to help commemorate the photographers responsible for documenting U.S. nuclear tests. When it appeared, this audio document caught a great deal of popular media attention, given the shocking event it captures - that of five Air Force men tasked with standing directly beneath an aerial nuclear blast, as part of Operation Plumbob. (A sixth man employed by the Air Force, civilian George Yoshitake, documented the event on camera.) If this recording provides a convincing sense for you of the sound of a nuclear blast, it is because it took humans placing themselves at risk in order to do so. It is the danger of the situation – half mocked by the airmen themselves through the sign they erected at the site – that helps make this recording believable, sensational.
