Speaking specifically to this picture
https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/trinity/afterwards.html
In: 685
Trinity created radiation hazards similar to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – most of the danger was concentrated in the first few hours. The difference is that civilian victims had *no idea* what they had been subjected to, how or where to hide from fallout, for how long, etc.
In contrast, Los Alamos scientists didn’t *immediately* drive into ground zero. They sent crews in lead-lined Sherman tanks to do an initial survey, wore dosimeters, etc. Some of those tankers did receive significant doses, over ten rads, but those were several times too small to cause ARS.
Dose limits weren’t understood at the time. The project had a few criticality accidents, two of them fatal, and had seen ARS but they didn’t have enough data to predict what a lethal short-term dose would be. That data would come from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Oppenheimer died of cancer, but we know enough now to say it was far more likely the result of smoking than his atomic career.
Trinity did cause harm to civilians. We know that roughly a hundred cattle were burned by fallout; the government purchased 88 of them as compensation – and people lived and worked in the same places. The fallout from that test was never properly mapped and victims never compensated. This is partially because it was the world’s first public radiation emergency, nobody knew what to do – and mostly because of military secrecy.
In short, they were careful and were lucky to have been careful enough.
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