The Nevada National Security Sites, popularized as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a reservation of the United States Department of Energy located in the southeastern portion of Nye County, Nevada, about 65 mi (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas.
A November 1951 nuclear test at Nevada Test Site, Operation Buster–Jangle "Dog". It had a yield of 21 kilotons of TNT (88 TJ), and was the first U.S. nuclear field exercise conducted with live troops maneuvering on land. Troops shown are 6 mi (10 km) from the blast.
This handbill was distributed 16 days before the first nuclear device was detonated at the site.
Mushroom cloud seen from downtown Las Vegas.
A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke, and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently energetic detonation or deflagration will produce the same effect. They can be caused by powerful conventional weapons, like thermobaric weapons such as the ATBIP and GBU-43/B MOAB. Some volcanic eruptions and impact events can produce natural mushroom clouds.
Ascending cloud from Redoubt Volcano from an eruption on April 21, 1990. The mushroom-shaped plume rose from avalanches of hot debris (pyroclastic flows) that cascaded down the north flank of the volcano.
Mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.
Vue du siège de Gibraltar et explosion des batteries flottantes View of the Siege of Gibraltar and the Explosion of the Floating Batteries, artist unknown, c. 1782
Mushroom cloud in an engraving from Gerhard Vieth's Physikalischer Kinderfreund (1798)