00:00In 1945, the U.S. tested the world's first atomic bomb and wiped a town off the map to do it.
00:07The place was Ranch School and the village of Carrizozo, New Mexico,
00:11near a desolate area the military called the Trinity Site.
00:15To build the bomb and test it in secret, the U.S. Army took over vast parts of southern New Mexico,
00:22evacuating families, ranchers, and native communities with almost no warning.
00:26On July 16, 1945, at 5.29 a.m., the first atomic bomb, codenamed The Gadget, was detonated.
00:37The blast vaporized everything near Ground Zero, including the small ranching settlements nearby.
00:43Windows shattered 120 miles away. Livestock were burned alive.
00:48Fallout spread across rural New Mexico, but residents weren't warned.
00:52Many developed cancers in the years that followed, part of what historians now call the Downwinders' tragedy.
01:00The government simply erased the test villages from maps, and their stories vanished for decades.
01:07Today, the Trinity Site is a historic landmark, visited twice a year.
01:12But the people who lived there were never compensated, never acknowledged.
01:16Their homes became radioactive dust in the desert wind.
01:21Forgotten victims of the test that changed the world forever.
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