After the thing went off

“Time comes, and this tremendous flash out there is so bright that I duck … I look back up and I see this white light changing into yellow and then into orange. Clouds form and disappear again – from the compression and expansion of the shock wave.

Finally, a big ball of orange, the center that was so bright, becomes a ball of orange that starts to rise and billow a little bit and get a little black around the edges, and then you see it’s a big ball of smoke with flashes on the inside of the fire going out, the heat.

…

Finally, after about a minute and a half, there’s suddenly a tremendous noise – BANG, and then a rumble, like thunder – and that’s what convinced me … the solidity of the sound at that distance meant that it had really worked.

The man standing next to me said, “What’s that?”

I said, “That was the Bomb”.

…

After the thing went off, there was tremendous excitement at Los Alamos. Everybody had parties, we all ran around. I sat on the end of a jeep and beat drums and so on. But one man, I remember, Bob Wilson, was just sitting there moping.

I said, “What are you moping about?”

He said, “It’s a terrible thing that we made.”

I said, “But you started it, you got us into it.”

You see, what happened to me – what happened to the rest of us – is we started for a good reason, then you’re working very hard to accomplish something and it’s a pleasure, it’s excitement. And you stop thinking, you know; you just stop. Bob Wilson was the only one who was still thinking about it, at that moment.”

Richard Feynman from Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!