It’s a peaceful time of day at 5:29 a.m. Quiet.

In that predawn moment 80 years ago, Allen Sánchez said, his grandfather was milking cows in Tomé. A light appeared as the first test of a nuclear weapon occurred to the south, at what is now White Sands Missile Range.

The development of the atomic bomb — and its detonation at Trinity Site on July 16, 1945 — forever changed the landscapes of New Mexico, the country and the world.

Eighty years later, the powerful weapons that killed over 200,000 people in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 — and later left countless people in communities near testing sites like Trinity with decades of health effects — remain an ever-present threat, even after a dramatic decrease in the number of nuclear warheads worldwide since a height in the mid-1980s.

“My grandfather said it was like a sun that rose and set,” said Sánchez, president and mission leader of the Albuquerque nonprofit CommonSpirit St. Joseph’s Children, during a vigil Sunday for the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test. “Except it hasn’t set.”

Where in the world are nuclear weapons?

Nine countries — Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — are known to possess nuclear weapons.

At the beginning of 2025, there were roughly 12,200 nuclear warheads worldwide, according to estimates from the Federation of American Scientists. The United States and Russia hold the lion’s share.

In September 2023, the U.S. had about 3,750 nuclear weapons, plus 2,000 that had been retired and were awaiting disarmament. More than 12,000 weapons in the country have been disarmed since 1994. The Federation of American Scientists estimates Russia has around 4,300.

In the decades after the Trinity Test, the U.S. and what was then the Soviet Union scrambled to increase their stockpiles. In 1986, there were more than 60,000 nuclear warheads worldwide; like today, the majority were held by the two dueling nations.

It was a turning point. That same year, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavík, Iceland. The following year, the Soviet Union and the U.S. signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Over the next four decades, the number of nuclear warheads worldwide fell by more than 80%.

But even one could wreak havoc.

The power of a nuclear weapon, or “yield,” is measured in the amount of energy produced in kilotons — equal to the explosive output of 1,000 tons of TNT.

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 16 kilotons and 21 kilotons, respectively. Together, they killed more than 200,000 people, according to estimates.

Today, large military nuclear weapons are often measured in megatons, not kilotons — a unit of measurement 1,000 times more potent.

For high-yield nuclear weapons, heat is the biggest initial concern, according to a fact sheet from the Department of Homeland Security. A fireball produced by the initial explosion can reach tens of millions of degrees and light additional fires throughout the blast zone.

Shockwaves from nuclear weapons would also ripple through a city, causing damage to people and structures.

Atmospheric ionization after the blast likely would send out an electromagnetic pulse that could knock out electronic equipment.

Once the mushroom cloud blooms, radioactive fallout drops to the earth, bringing the threat of radiation sickness and long-term health effects for anyone in its shadow.

Geopolitical tensions: More perilous than ever?

The United States’ nuclear posture has historically been one of deterrence. The theory goes that if two countries both have a good hand of cards, neither will make a move due to fear of retaliation. In that vein, the nation’s nuclear triad — nuclear weapons deployed by land, sea and air — is maintained so the deterrent is more than a bluff.

Last year, officials said that strategy may have to shift to accommodate increasingly adversarial relationships with nuclear countries.

“We are now in a world where we’re facing multiple nuclear competitors, multiple states that are growing, diversifying and modernizing their nuclear arsenals and also, unfortunately, prioritizing the role that nuclear weapons play in their national security strategies,” said Richard C. Johnson, who served as the nation’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction policy. Johnson was speaking in November in Washington at a panel on nuclear issues.

Russia, China and North Korea are all risks, stated a 2024 report on the nation’s nuclear employment strategy.

“Any one of these nuclear challenges would be formidable itself, but the evidence of growing collaboration and collusion between Russia, the [People’s Republic of China], the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], and Iran makes the situation even more challenging,” the report stated.

Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ global security program, said although the number of nuclear warheads has decreased, in some ways, the situation is more perilous than ever.

The nation is moving away from stockpile stewardship and further toward modernization programs, including the production of new plutonium pits at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Spaulding said.

Since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no other country has deployed a nuclear weapon. But that doesn’t mean countries that own them have been peaceful.

Russia is locked in war with neighboring Ukraine. Israel and Iran warred briefly earlier this year. The U.S. military attacked three military sites in Iran in an effort to destroy the nation’s nuclear program. In May, India and Pakistan had a military skirmish after a terrorist attack killed approximately two dozen people in Kashmir.

“All nine of the nuclear nations either have been directly involved or providing support for military conflict in the last 12 months, which is sort of staggering to think about,” Spaulding said.

Speaking at Sunday’s vigil at St. Pius X High School in Albuquerque, Santa Fe Archbishop John C. Wester said the nuclear weapons feared in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis were “pop guns” compared to today’s weapons.

Pope Francis, who died earlier this year, was a champion for disarmament. Built on his memory, Wester said, the archdioceses of Santa Fe, Seattle and Nagasaki and the Diocese of Hiroshima have joined together to “remember the destruction caused by nuclear weapons, to journey together to prevent nuclear harm and to prevent against future nuclear harm.”

That doesn’t mean the immediate tossing of nuclear weapons, Wester said, but a gradual, verified move away from the weapons by all countries.

“We’re not advocating for unilateral disarmament,” Wester said. “That would be suicide.”

Wester told The New Mexican that while he can’t speak for the new leader of the Vatican, he believes Pope Leo XIV, an Augustinian, would be “in line” with the late Pope Francis’ views on nuclear weapons and disarmament.

“He’s definitely his own man,” Wester said. “… But I think very much he’s already indicated clearly, when the United States bombed Iran, their facilities and nuclear facilities, he indicated clearly [that] was not the answer.”

Big dollars for weapons in New Mexico

In a February news conference, President Donald Trump said he would like to meet with China and Russia to discuss slowing down nuclear development.

The world has enough nuclear weapons as it is, Trump said — “we could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over” — and the three nations are spending massive amounts to maintain and expand their stockpiles.

“Denuclearize,” Trump said. “What a beautiful term that is.”

But documents on the Department of Energy and Department of Defense budgets show major increases for nuclear weapons.

In New Mexico — which has, since the time of the Manhattan Project, played a key role in national defense — that means big increases for Los Alamos National Laboratory.

After manufacturing a diamond-stamped plutonium pit — the hollow, spherical trigger device for nuclear weapons — last year, Los Alamos National Laboratory is looking at a $5.7 billion budget for fiscal year 2026, up 17% from its previous budget.

Sandia National Laboratories is also looking at an increased budget in the upcoming fiscal year, although a much smaller one.

The increases come as other Department of Energy programs — namely spending on renewable energy and national laboratories managed by the Office of Science — are facing major cuts.

But one program was a winner in the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The budget reinstated and expanded a program known as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which was allowed to expire last year.

The expansion will include more opportunities for New Mexicans to receive compensation. Previously, only people who participated on-site in weapons testing, those who mined uranium before 1971 and “downwinders” affected by nuclear weapons testing in Nevada were eligible for the one-time compensation, not those affected by the 1945 Trinity test.

Now, New Mexico downwinders who lived in the state at least a year between 1944 and 1962 and developed eligible radiogenic cancers, as well as all uranium mine and mill employees employed between 1942 and 1990, can receive up to $100,000 in compensation.

Loretta Anderson, co-founder of the Southwest Uranium Miners Coalition Post 71, said she felt “shock” and “disbelief” over the passage.

Anderson first became involved in the fight to bring compensation to uranium miners in 2014. She was working in a home health care office and saw that many miners who had worked after 1971 were getting conflicting advice about filing for benefits.

She also is the daughter of uranium mine employees. Her mother and father worked at the Jackpile-Paguate Mine at Laguna Pueblo, once the largest open-pit uranium mine in the world. Both of her parents were diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis.

“The big boom in the ‘70s … that was our main source of of work, was working at the uranium mines,” Anderson said.

But the fight isn’t over, Anderson said, not until the RECA program is extended past 2028 and abandoned uranium mining sites are cleaned up.

“They haven’t cleaned up the mess they left us,” Anderson said.