Trinitite: The radioactive rock buried in New Mexico before the Atari games

Trinitite specimens. (credit: mseery)

Update, 5/29/21: It's Memorial Day weekend in the US, and staff are trying to stay away from the keyboard accordingly. As such, we're resurfacing a few classic pieces from our archives. This one originally ran on September 1, 2014 and details a long weekend-appropriate road trip adventure to come face-to-face with an artifact of past military activity.

Four months ago in April 2014, Ars Technica sent me out to Alamogordo, New Mexico to be present at the unearthing of a landfill that was long-rumored to hold a trove of Atari games, dumped at the site after the video game crash of 1983. As I was preparing for the trip, my coworkers and I chatted about the event in the editors' IRC channel.

"When you're hanging out in the trash dump be sure to look out for Trinitite," automotive editor Jonathan Gitlin told me.

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