the.com/ground zero
Where something detonated so hard everything after is measured from it.
means The exact point of origin or starting point of something catastrophic or transformative — the spot everything else radiates out from.
from Coined by nuclear scientists to mark the point on the ground directly beneath (or at) an atomic bomb's detonation — the zero point from which blast radius and damage were measured outward. The term entered wider use through Cold War-era writing about nuclear war, then was repurposed metaphorically for any disaster's epicenter, and became indelibly attached to the World Trade Center site after September 11, 2001.
- original use
- Point directly beneath or above a nuclear blast
- coined for
- Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, 1945
- semantic drift
- Now means any disaster origin point, literal or metaphorical
- post-9/11 shift
- Became near-exclusive shorthand for the World Trade Center site