Preserving Pogosticks & Tales of a Triggerman: Adventures in Cold War Archaeology

It was the dawn of the Cold War. In the southern Nevada desert, the vanguard of a new kind of army—composed of engineers, scientists, technicians, craftsmen, and support personnel—was arriving to establish one of the most important, and certainly most visible, battlefields of that war, the Nevada Test Site (NTS). In 1951, one of the first to arrive was "triggerman" Alfred O'Donnell.

O'Donnell, whose critical specialty was the timing, arming, and firing of nuclear devices, was a charter employee of EG&G, one of the early major contractors brought in to help conduct the nuclear testing program at the NTS. DRI archaeologists Drs. Colleen Beck and William Johnson are now conducting an ongoing oral history project with O'Donnell to preserve his memories of this extraordinary period.

"The major impression I've come away with after hearing his recollections is the tremendous pride and dedication these people had for what they were trying to do," says Beck. "The nuclear arms race was just beginning. Every one of them felt it was a battle for the survival of the nation… maybe for civilization. They were up against some enormous technical challenges, and they felt responsible for coming through. While there has been a lot of debate and protest about whether the U.S. should have been in a nuclear arms race, or whether the program was conducted with enough regard for public safety, there was no question about the necessity of this mission in the minds of the people who worked at the test site."

When completed, O'Donnell's oral history will join nearly a half million other records and documents in the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute at DRI. The collection will help scholars understand how America set out to defend itself against a weapon few could imagine actually using. "This was an entirely different approach to war," notes Beck. "Instead of blowing up each other, the two sides detonated these devices in their own countries."

In addition to oral histories and paper records, the physical artifacts of the nuclear testing program are also important in telling this very serious story. They range from the remains of equipment devised to control, observe, and monitor the nuclear tests, to the objects—simulated towns, engineering structures, and impact areas—targeted by more than 900 atomic blasts. These artifacts are now being collected from warehouses and personal collections, and some are even still being unearthed today from remains hidden at the Nevada Test Site.

Bill Johnson has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy for more than a decade to insure that this most visible evidence of the test site's mission is not lost to posterity. While his primary work has concentrated on the simulated towns and structures that were subjected to nuclear blasts, last fall Johnson participated in a project undertaken to recover and preserve equipment and other materials from a "ground zero" instrument bunker.

"Somewhere under that cloud is our pogostick." This is a photo of the mushroom cloud produced in the Fizeau test, in which the nuclear device was detonated 500 feet above the instrument bunker. -Photo courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Witness to an historical event. Dr. Bill Johnson, left, with Bechtel Nevada Industrial Hygienist Angela Ray, examining the Fizeau pogostick, which recorded the September 1957 test. Photo by Rick Smith, Bechtel Nevada

The atmospheric test, code named "Fizeau," took place on Yucca Flat on September 14, 1957, and the bunker was located directly under the 500-foot-high tower where the 11-kiloton device was detonated.

"The bunker was used to house equipment that measured yield and performance. Instrumentation inside the bunker included oscilloscopes, oscillographs, and a host of other data-gathering equipment," says Johnson. "When the first team went in to see what was there last November, they were somewhat dismayed by the amount of equipment that had already been removed—maybe scavenged for other tests or taken in clean-up efforts."

Johnson convinced the dispirited team to let him have a look, and, dressed in a "space suit" for radiation safety (eventually determined unnecessary), Johnson found a largely intact spring-loaded instrument package known as a pogostick, so called because it was designed to bounce up and down to absorb the shock of an overhead explosion, thereby surviving the impact while recording information.

"Compared to what I know of other NTS locations, I found this to be one of the most intact bunkers we've ever examined," enthuses Johnson. "I was very excited by the amount of material recovered there."

The Fizeau pogostick will join hundreds of other artifacts available for visitors to examine in the Nevada Atomic Testing History Institute's museum.

- John Doherty