Ground zero is the exact location on the ground marking the detonation point of any bomb; in the case of a bomb designed to explode in the air, it refers to the point on the ground directly below the bomb at the moment of detonation.

Since it is the impact point for the bomb, it is, of course, the point of highest damage. Around that spot are drawn concentric circles showing how far out from the impact point the circle is.

The term has chiefly come to be associated with nuclear explosions, but is also used for earthquakes, epidemics and other disasters.

It was military slang—used at the Trinity site where the weapon tower for the first nuclear weapon was at point 'zero'—and moved into general use very shortly after the end of World War II (see Manhattan Project).

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Before September 11, 2001 the term Ground zero was often used for the the devastation caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki [1].

World Trade Center

Western journalists applied the term to describe the former site of the World Trade Center of New York City, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Rescue workers at the site of the collapse avoided this term as insensitive, disrespectful, even offensive, to those that died. The phrase "The Pile", as in the pile of rubble that was left after the buildings collapsed, was the term used by the rescue workers themselves. See World Trade Center site for reconstruction news.

Other uses

• The term is also used by members of the U.S. armed forces to describe the open space at the center of The Pentagon, in a blackly humorous reference to the likelihood of its being a nuclear weapons target in any nuclear war.

• There is also a film named Ground Zero . This film is about a documentary filmer who gets into trouble after filming at a site in Australia used by the United Kingdom for nuclear tests using aboriginal population as guinea pigs.

• There is a song called "Christmas at Ground Zero" By Weird Al Yankovic on his fourth album Polka Party.

• Also an Airsoft site located in the Somerley Estate in Ringwood, featuring a Vietnam style village, Observation Point and other features orientated around gameplay, it is also closely affiliated to the Airsoft store Zero One and the popular Airsoft community ZeroIn.

• Ground Zero is the name of an official expansion to the computer game Quake 2.

External links

• History of the Word Ground Zero
• Step by step scenario of a 150 kiloton bomb exploding in Manhattan - click on the Next >> button at the bottom of each slide.
• The destructive forces unleashed - a U.S. physics professor has calculated the amount of energy released in the hijack attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.