Nuclear Fiction Newsletter, #18

An Uncanny Oak Ridge Legend

Since it is Halloween week, my first post based on my very recent trip to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, setting of my Manhattan Project novel Fission: A Novel of Atomic Heartbreak will focus on the uncanny legend of John Hendrix (1865-1915), who slept on the icy ground for forty days and nights and then recounted visions predicting that Black Oak Ridge (the site of the Secret City of Oak Ridge) would be filled with construction and factories that would help win the greatest war of all time. I could not tell the story better than in the short video below, narrated by my wonderful friend, D. Ray Smith, the Oak Ridge City Historian.

Our Hidden Past: The Prophet of Oak Ridge