“At the time of detonation, the surrounding mountains were illuminated “brighter than daytime” for one to two seconds, and the heat was reported as “being as hot as an oven” at the base camp.

Hot as an oven — sounds like a summer’s day in Houston. Any summer’s day.

It is worth remembering that the Harvard crowd and their ilk decided for their own reasons in the aftermath of WWII that nuking the enemy was much worse than firebombing them (as the Brits had done to the Germans) or simply pillaging, raping & murdering the enemy (as the Russians had done to the Germans). Our best & brightest decided that radiation was a special evil which would render the land uninhabitable for eons, despite the evidence that Japanese were growing watermelons in Hiroshima shortly after the event.

In the book “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman”, the author describes watching the Trinity test from 20 miles away. A flash followed by a blast. Sounds sort of like the summer afternoon lightning storms so familiar to Houstonians. Others watched the test from 6 miles away — they all survived. There were structures much closer to the test than that, which you can still visit today.

Perhaps it was a little flippant of me to suggest that Houstonians would not learn of a nuclear blast until they saw it on the evening news. They would probably learn about it from local radio before that.

Obviously a nuclear explosion in a US city would be horrible event, but reality would fall short of the expectations of the Political Correct graduates of our “elite” institutions.