The Weird True WW2 Story Of The Women Who Helped Build The Bomb — And Atomic City aka Oak RIdge, Tennessee

Building an atomic bomb during WW2 was even more complex than depicted in the move Oppenheimer. In fact, the nuclear fission material that fueled Oppenheimer’s famous Zarathustra moment, was actually made miles away in a government-created town–Oak Ridge, Tennessee–filled with mostly women hired and shipped into this ‘designed’ community.’

Project directors quickly figured out that female employees who obediently followed directions and just got on with the manufacture of the radiated balls were much easier to deal with than male scientists who questioned everything.

From her book “The Girls of Atomic City,” our guest Denise KIernan depicts what life in this top-secret, artificial community was like, and how the people working there felt when they discovered what their work was actually about following the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com