77 Days in September

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On July 9, 1962, residents of the Hawaiian Islands became unwitting eyewitnesses of the latest scourge to escape from Pandora’s nuclear box. At just after eight o’clock in the evening, thirty electrical circuits powering a total of 300 streetlights overloaded, power lines melted together, burglar alarms sounded, dozens of car ignitions were rendered inoperable, TVs and radios malfunctioned, and microwave phone service to the island of Kauai was disrupted. At the exact same time, 930 miles southwest of Hawaii and 248 miles above sea level, the United States military detonated a 1.3-megaton nuclear bomb. The blast was an exercise by the Defense Atomic Support Agency (DASA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to determine and measure the effects of high altitude nuclear detonations for potential military applications.

This test, nicknamed “Starfish Prime,” was, and still is, the highest altitude, highest yield, atmospheric nuclear test of this type ever performed. It involved a bomb measuring just 20” in diameter, 54.3” in length, and weighing a little less than 1,700 lbs. A number of phenomena were observed as a result of the blast: an aurora was formed that lasted for over seven minutes and extended from Hawaii to New Zealand; seven satellites were immediately disabled, and, within a year, one-third of all low earth-orbiting satellites would fail (including Telstar 1, the world’s first communications satellite); radiation from the blast was trapped by the earth’s magnetic belts for seven years; and a previously theorized, but never studied, phenomenon called an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) was observed, the direct cause of the problems in Hawaii.

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