was at the base of the tower.

As a result of all the anxiety surrounding the possibility of a failure
of the test, a verse by an unknown author circulated around Los Alamos.
It read:

From this crude lab that spawned a dud.
Their necks to Truman's ax uncurled
Lo, the embattled savants stood,
and fired the flop heard round the world.[4]

A betting pool was also started by scientists at Los Alamos on the
possible yield of the Trinity test. Yields from 45,000 tons of TNT
to zero were selected by the various bettors. The Nobel Prize-winning
(1938) physicist Enrico Fermi was willing to bet anyone that the
test would wipe out all life on Earth, with special odds on the mere
destruction of the entire State of New Mexico!

Meanwhile back at the test site, technicians installed seismographic
and photographic equipment at varying distances from the tower. Other
instruments were set up for recording radioactivity, temperature, air
pressure, and similar data needed by the project scientists.

According to Lansing Lamont in his 1965 book Day of Trinity, life at
Trinity could at times be very exciting. One afternoon while scientists
were busily setting up test instruments in the desert, the tail gunner
of a low flying B-29 bomber spotted some grazing antelopes and opened up
with his twin.50-caliber machine guns. "A dozen scientists,... under the
plane and out of the gunner's line of vision, dropped their instruments
and hugged the ground in terror as the bullets thudded about them."[5]
Later a number of these scientists threatened to quit the project.

Workers built three observation points 5.68 miles (10,000 yards), north,
south, and west of Ground Zero. Code named Able, Baker, and Pittsburgh,
these heavily-built wooden bunkers were reinforced with concrete, and
covered with earth. The bunker designated Baker or South 10,000 served
as the control center for the test. This is where head scientist J.
Robert Oppenheimer would be for the test.

A fourth observation point was the test's Base Camp, (the abandoned Dave
McDonald ranch) located about ten miles southwest of Ground Zero. The
primary observation point was on Compania Hill, located about 20 miles
to the northwest of Trinity near today's Stallion Range Gate, off NM
380.

The test was originally scheduled for 4 a.m., Monday July 16, but was
postponed to 5:30 due to a severe thunderstorm that would have increased
the amount of radioactive fallout, and have in