Eighty years of the nuclear age, eighty years too long

July 16, 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the first nuclear explosion ever conducted.

Code named ‘Trinity’ and detonated on Native American land in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the 21 kiloton bomb not only had severe impacts for many of the communities who lived in—or downwind from—the area, but also the entire world, ever since. The Trinity bomb ignited the nuclear age and has cast a dark shadow over the world for the past eighty years. 

Three weeks after the United States detonated their first atomic weapon, they dropped two more on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 210,000 people, demonstrating the destructive and indiscriminate power of nuclear weapons and spurring the global nuclear arms race. In response to Russian and US nuclear sabre-rattling in 2024, stated “nuclear-weapon States continue to roll the dice, resisting disarmament measures and believing that, somehow our luck will never run out.” 

Alongside the victims of Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, the global victims of nuclear testing worldwide continues to grow.

Those living downwind from the Trinity tests in the Tularosa Basin—called ‘Downwinders’—would suffer lifetimes of illnesses from increased radiation exposure and would not receive any compensation from the United States government until 1990, when they received a $50,000 one-time compensation payout. 

The radiation contamination from Trinity poisoned the soil and water, in turn poisoning those who lived off the land, like the family of Tina Cordova, the founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, and who is the fourth generation in her family to have cancer since 1945 and whose father died of cancer at age 71. 

“Our lives were changed forever after Trinity. We have never lived a day without the threat of a nuclear exchange with a rogue nuclear-armed country. […] It’s world history,” said Cordova. The United States government knew well “in advance of the detonation at Trinity that radiation was damaging to human health and very dangerous. They full-well knew that the bomb was going to create fallout that would likely affect many, many people across New Mexico. And they still moved forward.”

The disregard for native and local populations in areas surrounding nuclear testing sites would become characteristic for nuclear testing worldwide. Since 1945, an estimated 2,056 nuclear tests have been detonated across all continents, except Antarctica and South America. One quarter of these were exploded in the atmosphere, and three quarters were detonated on land on over sixty sites that still bear the traces to this day. 

Like the downwinders in New Mexico, many global nuclear test survivors were not warned about the tests taking place, nor have they been adequately compensated for the lasting and generational damage that these tests have caused. Those in the Marshall Islands are still experiencing the implications of the 1956 nuclear tests across multiple generations.

The international community adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, though it is still yet to enter into force due to a lack of support from certain states. Despite this, the treaty formed a de facto moratorium on all forms of nuclear testing.

Building on this earlier legal framework, the Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), was adopted by 122 states in 2017. This treaty not only seeks the total abolition of nuclear weapons, but also requires, for the first time, assistance to victims of their use and testing and the remediation of contaminated environments. This treaty was created in partnership with the survivors of nuclear war, to compel states to address the needs of victims and impacted environments. 

During the 80th anniversary of the Trinity tests, it is important to reflect that justice for survivors is an essential part of the quest for a world free of nuclear weapons.

By Noah Jones, ICAN Australia Intern