Welcome to the Anthropocene

Somewhere in the Berkeley Radiation lab at the University of California, a group of scientists discovered plutonium. It was the dawn of the atomic age, 1940.

At 5:29 am on July 16, 1945, the secret Trinity detonation of the first atomic bomb ruptured the sky outside of Socorro, New Mexico. It was the dawn of the anthropocene.

The test has been described as the beginning of an epoch defined by sapiens’ role in shaping the planet.

The whole of human history thus far is roughly 24,000 years and the radioactive half-life of the man-made element plutonium-239 is 24,200 years.

A stockpile of 50 to 100 tonnes of the highly radioactive material exits today and will exist for generations equivalent in number to all that have existed.

Welcome to the Anthropocene.