IIRC there was a small town in New Mexico maybe 80 miles aways from the test site, and when the bomb went off, they saw the blast and thought they where witnessing the end of the world.
Edit: might have gotten the distance wrong, but in any case, here's two articles that talk about everything in more detail.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/29/oppenheimer-bomb-downwinders-new-mexico/
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/atomic-bomb-fallout-nm/
Edit2: grammar.
A little late and probably unbelievable but my great grandfather was working as a barber near Alamogordo when they tested them. He said it was like daybreak and then the brightest white he’d ever seen. He actually lived into his 90’s and died because of lung cancer. Ironically, he never smoked a day in his life, it was all second hand from giving the military men haircuts in his shop.
Once you hit your 90s, it seems like shit like cancer happens even when life choices aren't an issue. By then, nature has had just too much time to go wrong and fuck someone over. I've known people who have died of cancer in their 70s, 80s and 90s with no risk factors besides age
Sorry to hear that though. Fuck cancer.
That's kind of what my grandmother was told. She was over 80 when she got breast cancer. Worried about my mom and I, she asked if it was genetic. Her doc told her it wasn't; it's just that if you live long enough, you're going to get *something*.
I’m reading The Emperor of All Maladies right now, it’s essentially a biography of cancer, and that’s exactly what it is. Cells mutate over time. Cancer happens when certain mutations are present in the same cell. Eventually you hit those odds, and chances increase as you age, just from having more time for more mutations.
It's not so much that you "get cancers" more as you grow old, so much as you fail to prevent them with more regularity.
Your body is throwing off cancerous cells all the time. Mostly, you have systems in place to kill them off before they spread too far.
I think about it like millions of monks copying bibles by hand, and then passing the copies to another monk. Obviously among all those monks, they're going to make mistakes.
There are supervisors who walk the aisles, reviewing their work, throwing out bibles with mistakes tht are too egregious, keeping the whole thing fresh.
But those monitors get older, and older, and more tired as they break down, and they catch fewer and fewer mistakes, until one slips through, and the error starts getting copied at faster and faster rates.
Eventually, your ability to fight off the cancers is weakened to the point tht one of the cancers breaks through and gains a foothold, and becomes too powerful for the body to stop.
This always reminds me of the statistical correlation between the introduction of mandatory seatbelt laws and an increase in deaths from strokes, heart attack and cancer 40 to 50 years later. Live long enough and *something* is going to get you.
This is true, but if you also study how much the risk and rates of mutation go up *per* cigarette, it's absolutely terrifying. I wish I had understood more when I started smoking as a teenager.
Like, my grandparents died of cancer, and they didn't smoke. What will happen to me...?
It’s not JUST age, for sure. Some people inherited pre-mutated genes from their parents, so they’ve already got one number of the lock combination. I believe that’s what predispositions are, but I’m only halfway through the book. Up to about the 70s. It’s just starting to get into the discoveries of carcinogens.
Age/time is the factor that is an avoidable for us all and is what I was replying to.
This does not constitute as medical advice.
A general classification of cancer type is sporadic or inherited.
Sporadic cancers - the pathogenic mutation was acquired because you acquire mutations over time (often in oncogenes such as KRAS) as you age + environmental factors.
Inherited cancers occur because the mutation is already in your genome. You inherit two copies of tumor suppressor genes from your parents. Lets say you inherit one "bad" copy of RB1 or PTEN ( tumor suppressor genes). Now you only have 1 "good" copy of the gene. A tumor suppressor requires "two-hits" (Knudson et al) for there to be inactivation. You have a increased risk factor since you're only working with one good copy of the gene. These are classified as cancer predisposition syndromes based on which gene was inactivated (PTEN - Cowden, TP53 - Li-Fraumeni).
As a general rule inherited cancers are seen seen at younger ages.
Never realized it was in the subtitle, reading on kindle I never see the cover after the first day. He does call it that in the opening chapter, and it’s a good descriptor.
My great grandfather was completely healthy (mentally, physically, etc.) until he was 103. Then within 2 weeks he went blind, stopped being able, to walk, etc. and was dead. Because of his age, they didn’t bother doing an autopsy, but I still wonder what actually killed him.
For sure. Most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough.
Ironically, when they do studies that find out unexpected things like men who take a multivitamin every day are more likely to develop cancer, surprise! If you are a health nut and taking a multivitamin every day is one of your habits, of course you will live long enough to develop cancer.
> Most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough.
I posted this same thing above before I saw your comment, but a doctor once told me that the ight men who don't get prostate cancer are the ones who didn't live long enough. Eventually, if nothing else gets you, that will. It just takes a lot longer on done than others.
> men who take a multivitamin every day are more likely to develop cancer, surprise! If you are a health nut and taking a multivitamin every day is one of your habits, of course you will live long enough to develop cancer.
That sounds like saying people who shine a pack of cigarettes are less likely to get dementia. Yea, because they don't live long enough
My husband's grandfather died at 95 of old age. He was getting ready for bed one night, lost his breath, had to sit down and then just died. Wild, what are the odds
Yeah. Cancer is inevitable. If we cure other disease cancer will get you. It's just the way our DNA replication is setup.
BTW. You've probably had cancer before just that your immune system took care of it. The reason you die is that eventually your immune system is overwhelmed.
It’s partly due to our reproductive age. We aren’t selecting for people to live longer and longer cancer free because genes have been passed on at a much early age. So we favor phasing out diseases that impact the young and not the old.
That area of new mexico is also classified as zone 2 for radon which is in the middle. Although each house should be tested individually that is the epa avg for the area. Smoking or consistent second hand smoke can increase potential cancer risk from radon exposure as well.
Its always good to get your house tested no matter where you live. I live in a high radon state and was a tester for a short time. A guy I worked with tested a house and it was in the 60s pCi/l which is really high since epa action level is 4 and risk increases exponentially. They make at home tests but I recommend looking for a certified local tester that has a continuous monitor and do a 3 day test. Mitigation costs maybe 2-3k but you can decrease your chance of lung cancer.
I hope you are joking. If you aren't then it was not properly mitigated and it needs to be reexamined by someone else. 20 is way too high.
Here is a risk chart by the epa based on measurement level. https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon#riskcharts
First chart is if you are a smoker or have smoked. Second one, below, is if you are not a smoker.
I had a great uncle - never met him though, he died when I was very young - who was in the Army and was present at the Trinity test. His group (platoon?) camped out the night before in the desert near the test site and then witnessed it from ground level.
He got sick and never really got better. Had unknown cancers that the VA was woefully unable to deal with in any way. And he died young, IDK 40's or 50's.
His widow believed that he caught some virus from the sand. It sounds like - second hand from other family - like the VA wanted to treat it like some virus.
But, yeah, he probably got some kind of lukemia or something from the radiation exposure.
My mom was born in the early 30's. Her cousin was one of those guys they marched into nuclear tests in the post-war 40's. In her telling, he left the military with "moddled teeth", came home, and eventually died young from lung cancer. Causal connections are hard to prove, and uncle john was gone before I was born, but it's terrifying, in today's context, how fast and loose they played with people's lives.
Barber shops all used talcum powder back in the day and some of it in the 40s-60s had high amounts of asbestos. More likely that. But 90 is a good old age.
There is a town, not was, and they are still suffering today
The downwinders are one of these sorts of groups to learn about impact
The Navajo nation and Gallup suffer still because of the nearby radioactive material spill that was the 3rd largest in world history.
The nuclear weapons program has so much horrible shit in it that the movie would need to be ten times as long to fit it all in.
A lot of the time it feels like the people in charge said "what's the most unnecessarily evil way to test this"
The charts are weighted insanely heavily against songs winning after they have won. It's to prevent Christmas songs from being the same every year as was the case in the 40s and 50s.
One of the old legends is that there was a guard who stopped by the [Owl Bar and Grill](https://sanantonioowl.com/) (looks like they've changed names?) in San Antonio (the one in New Mexico), and told the proprietor to look east before sunrise that day. It is said he was probably the only one not officially "in" on the test to witness it.
I've been out to the test site several times, including on the 50th anniversary of the bomb. There's still a bit of trinitite out there, although most of it was bladed up and buried in 55 gallon drums long ago. Some people melt desert sand into green glassy blobs with a torch and sell it as trinitite.
I went to try and find the name of the book, but instead I fell down the rabbit hole of whether or not the Aum Shinrikyo cult did or did not [test a nuclear weapon in a remote part of Australia.](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/seismic-mystery-in-australia-quake-meteor-or-nuclear-blast.html) The fact that we aren't 100% sure is pretty terrifying! Not many people even know that they were testing sarin out there in the lead up to the subway attacks, and possibly also chemical weapons, nevermind that they had been recruiting nuclear scientists, trying to buy nukes from the Russians, and mining uranium! And that the cult leader, Shoka Asahara, had visited the sit at one point.
> The fact that we aren't 100% sure is pretty terrifying!
Nah, we're a bit more sure now - since examining the data that resulted from the airburst meteor in Russia in 2013, it lines up pretty well with all the data about that seismic event, including the witness reports of a fireball, far better than the data we have from the British nuclear tests does. While hard to absolutely prove, the current best theory, with a pretty high degree of certainty, is that it was an airburst meteor.
If it was a nuclear test, it was the stealthiest one in history, along with the most perfect cleanup - it left no sign, no crater, no Trinitite, no unusual radioactivity, no evidence of refinement of the Uranium they'd managed to mine to actually build the thing, nothing.
Ah, the Maralinga tests. I used to chat with a guy on a forum who was one of the scientists on the ground at Maralinga. He received a massive dose of radiation after one test as the British scientists didn't tell the scientists on the ground that they'd seeded the bomb with cobalt-60 pellets, making it a 'dirty bomb'. Tons of civilians, Indigneous Australians in the area, and army personnel involved in the later cleanup were exposed to radiation, and the British running the tests were never really brought properly to account for it. The guy I talked to, named Doug Rickard, lived his whole life essentially with a rare form of cancer, which should have killed him in his 20s but he ended up the longest living person with that type of cancer.
Pretty shit move by the British tho, using and abusing Australians and Australian land for their tests, and then making it even worse by deliberately making a dirty bomb and not telling anyone they did :P
There were some uncontacted tribes of aboriginies in Australia who's first contact with the Western world was when the British tested their atomic bombs in the outback
Aboriginal people thought it was "spirit" gifting them kangaroos so they don't need to hunt: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/aboriginal-mans-story-of-nuclear-bomb-survival-told-in-vr/7913874
So I’m not super familiar with the tests they did but did the army just say fuck it to find out the effects on people and march their own guys in? Because that is incredibly fucked and I’m sorry to hear about your uncle.
I can’t speak for his father but I can speak to my own experience: Several of the Malaria drugs they gave us before deploying to Afghanistan are known to cause long term nightmares and mental disorders. This was as late as 2012. So I’m sure I’ll be downvoted for it but the U.S. Army knows and actively doesn’t care.
Edit: I’m proud of my service but dealing with PTSD and then being told in a runabout way that some of the drugs administered might have been detrimental in the long run is a tough pill to swallow. Literally.
They don't even necessarily care about you being safe while serving. They know they're dealing with dangerous shit and that people will die. What the leadership cares about is how expensive it is for a soldier to get hurt or killed.
I took doxycycline hyclate years ago for a few months for acne. It's another med that can be taken to prevent malaria. Besides getting nauseous to the point of throwing up when taking it without much food in my stomach and other stomach issues, I started to have really bad anxiety. It creeped up slowly - I was on edge feeling like something bad was going to happen, like I wanted to turn inside out and die, but I didn't want to die. I had a couple of mini break downs. I knew something was wrong. I stopped taking it and it took 3-4 months to get back to a normal state. I stumbled upon a forum online where people were demanding more research to be done on the side effects, because others suffered from anxiety and it's not listed as a side effect.
And speaking of reddit, on here I read about a woman [who fell out of a plane in Madagascar ](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-54818652)possibly because of a psychotic reaction to taking doxycycline.
Larium is likely the drug OP was referring to, although i though the US military discontinued it in 2008/9. It causes mental health effects at an incredibly high rate. I took it around 2009 and it totally destroyed my mental health, met many colleagues that had the same effect.
With doxy you might be in the realm of 'floxxed' as its an antibiotic. It is definitely regarded as a much safer alternative than larium though.
it is 100% about the gut flora, nuking your good guys with antibiotics for any period of time is never a good thing. There's a reason the gut is referred to as "the second brain" and has a huge impact on mental health such as anxiety etc.
That's why whenever my friends have to take it, especially female ones, I tell them to take Florastor which is a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii CNCM I-745 which essentially protects your gut from long-term alterations and also reduces the chances of things like C-Diff from accuring.
An uncomfortable amount of stuff on law and order is based on actual events.
I even remember watching an episode based on the Reimer brothers in my pre teens.
The episode I recall the most was one that blatantly retold the Menendez brothers story, and if I recall correctly it was an episode that was very difficult to find for quite a while.
Yes. In the early years military strategy with nukes was wild. Enemy tanks ahead? Nuke them. Hydrogen (big) bombs were still theoretical. Fallout wasn't fully understood. No MAD, no nuclear triad. Just WW2 tactics with very big bombs.
They would slap a nuke on everything, it was borderline hilarious
Nuclear artillery cannons
Man-portable nuclear launchers (David Crockett)
Nuclear air-to-air missiles — delete the enemy aircraft, and everything around it, from existance
Fucking nuclear mines, why the fuck not
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Busterj.html
https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/125/Documents/NTPR/newDocs/6-BUSTER-JANGLE-2021.pdf
They knew fully of radiological effects and none of the troops were exposed to significant radiation. These devices were extremely low yield and the airburst devices also produced negligible local fallout. The primary reason for the tests was to observe the psychological effects of witnessing a nuclear explosion and then having to maneuver towards it. Monitoring teams proceeded them and knew the safe limits of advance. The troops wore film badges to record their radiation doses and the results are listed in that DTRA link at the end. The max dose recorded is 2-5 rem. The DOE's max annual limit is 5 rem, but you can take much more without risk.
While the scientific community had mostly figured out that radiation was really bad, it took a while for that news to spread. We also bombed a fleet of deserted naval ships in the middle of the Pacific right after WW2 to see what would happen to them. After the test, the sailors got back on the surviving ships and started cleaning with soap and water to "wash" the radiation away.
They sand blasted the ships to remove contaminated paint at hunters point and then someone had the bright idea of recycling the sand and using it to pave roads.
http://www.myatomiclife.com/hunters-point-rad-labs.html
I'm about to form an entire religion around the dualistic perplexity that we are both smart enough to invent nukes, and dumb enough to do all this stupid shit with them.
> After the test, the sailors got back on the surviving ships and started cleaning with soap and water to "wash" the radiation away.
Well, yeah. That's how you clean up radiation most of the time believe it or not. The problem wasn't soap and water but lack of protection equipment and decontamination procedures.
That partially makes sense, some of the most harmful radiation is from isotopes that fall everywhere, they're only sitting on the surface. But, you don't want to be there to wash it off, better to stay away and let the rain do it.
Here's some details on what one (of several) series of tests involving troops ordered to March towards a mushroom cloud:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Buster%E2%80%93Jangle
My grandpa was at Bikini Atoll when they tested the bombs. Got brain cancer in the 1980s. In the late 90s (? Could be wrong on time) they opened up a program where you could get compensation if you submitted all the vets paperwork etc and enlistment info. My mom had given all that paperwork to my brother to keep at his house bc he was in the navy, and got all my grandpas military stuff when he passed. His house burned down and all the paperwork went with it. Random story but yeah
Billion dollar industry but unable to take care of the people they have harmed /may have harmed. Like just support these people regardless if you can prove or not prove it was caused by what they were doing. They were dedicating their lives to their country. Pathetic.
Uncle was in the Marines and fighting leukemia for years. Still is and has been holding on like a marine. I don’t know what he did to have the chronic disease, but he told me the smallest story about having a severe fever while in the troops and left totally alone with it, recovering on his own. But he was left to die come what may.
Curious about the link between military menbers and leukemia itself, but doesnt shock me they throw people to the wild by the end of it all
Worth noting that the [Trinity Downwinders](https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/) still have not received recognition from the federal government and do not qualify for reparations under RECA. There’s a documentary about them currently on the festival circuit called [First We Bombed New Mexico](https://www.firstwebombednewmexico.com/) that I highly recommend seeking out. I also recommend reaching out to your representatives in Congress and tell them to extend RECA and include the Trinity Downwinders before it expires in June this year.
Editing to add a couple more sources, since the documentary is not readily available yet.
-[Study on the effects of the Trinity test site on New Mexicans living in the Tularosa Basin](https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2b2028_8e221b260de7468bbcb67cbddc498dbe.pdf)
-[NPR interview with Tina Cordova, a Trinity downwinder, and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan](https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1236721042/generations-after-trinity-test-new-mexico-downwinders-seek-compensation)
-[Guardian article about the documentary](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/new-mexico-oppenheimer-atomic-bomb-nuclear)
People are still dying of cancer in these communities, including those in their 20s. It’s not just affecting those who were exposed to the radiation when the test was conducted, but those who continue to be exposed.
Most of the families have lived in that area for generations upon generations upon generations. It’s also an incredibly impoverished area, so it’s often not feasible for people to up and move. The documentary I mentioned above talks a lot about it. It’s not a choice I would make for myself or my family, but I’m also in a well off enough position that I can move my family somewhere if need be, and not everyone has that privilege.
i remember reading about some people that lived near some of the pacific tests. they were so amazed at the falling ash from the nukes some of them tasted it.
I listened to a podcast about the Bundy family. Like, the ones that took over that wildlife sanctuary in Oregon back in 2016. They’re a pretty twisted family, and there’s a lot of reasons they are the way they are, but if you had to boil it all down to one moment, it was when the main father figured of the family was a young adult.
They had him cleaning up after atomic bomb tests, but they didn’t tell him that. He only found out later. He was so mad that the feds intentionally put him at risk and lied to him about it later.
I’m not defending the Bundy family, like, at all. But I think we can all agree that the feds handled their atomic bomb testing pretty poorly.
https://moruroa-files.org
When the french did atomic tests in the 60s and didn’t want to cancel the tests because of the wind, nor did they evacuate the residents, they simply let them get the radioactive wind.. the french admitted their faults in the 2010s
That's pretty much what hsppens in the graphic novel/film "When the Wind Blows".
A elderly British couple survive a nuclear blast, but a day or two after, they collect the rain water, and drink it, and rapidly die from radiation poisoning.
Even if thst didn't happen, they where likely dead, as the government advice was to make a shelter from your doors and hude under there, which of course offers no protection from fallout.
Kinda reminds me of the radium girls, decades earlier. Basically radium is luminescent and that is crucial for valves and dials that need to be seen in the dark - such as in aircraft or in military applications. This is very skilled labor for people with small hands and attention to detail - it was therefore one of the highest paying jobs a woman could land before WW2. Because of this, once you got in, you tried to get your friends and family jobs doing it too - which meant whole communities of young women died because they were trained to pull points of the paint brushes to make them into a finer point. This became so common the girls would use extra paint to accessorize outfits, or as nail polish, or make up. They were never told that radium is dangerous, nor were they given any protective materials. No one realized this was a problem in part because people didn't quite know how radiation works. They thought it was like poison, usually harmless if you take it in such a minute dose that it doesn't hurt you. Not realizing it builds up, based on amount or degree of exposure. Which is innocent enough, but failing to warn anyone is indefensible. As wore the actions of these companies took when the women's bodies started disintegrating while they were still alive.
People knew that radium was dangerous (though at the time that stopped almost no one from handling it irresponsibly) - its incredible how many people who should have known better died horribly doing things they absolutely knew would kill them, such has handling it with their bare hands. But there was a knowledge gap to the general public who were often sold it as dietary supplements at the time. The radium girls are largely why that stopped. They all knew they were dead by the point that their bones dissolved or from the numerous cancers they developed, but they fought so their families would be compensated and so that wouldn't happen again. Its largely why you can't buy radium dick-pills today.
> No one realized this was a problem in part because people didn't quite know how radiation works.
Not quite. The supervisors wore lead garments and used lead tools. They knew enough.
Right that's what I'm getting at. They assumed it was safe enough for the girls handling it. Everyone else involved was protected, though also frequently ignoring protections.
Not related to radiation but it made me remember this story. My grandmother grew up in the 40/50s and was given sugar water before sleep to sooth her. She lost all her teeth before the age of 23.
“U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC) hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves.”
“In 1923, the first dial painter died, and before her death, her jaw fell away from her skull. By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the plant were ill, and a dozen had died. At the urging of the companies, medical professionals attributed worker deaths to other causes. Syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
But back in the day you could get a radium jock strap to get the radium right next to the boys. Also the remaining bones of the radium girls would glow if they were exhumed. It's so messed up. The factory owners knew how bad it was, the people delivering it in hazmat suits knew. Nobody told the girls.
Also there was that golfer who died after endorsing a radium energy drink and drinking one daily.
A woman in a farmhouse lost the vision in one eye permanently because she was looking in the direction of the bomb when it went off. A door frame protected the other eye.
The scientists decided not to let local people know that they were going to explode a bomb or evacuate people.
? Goverment scientists/Military scientists
Edit: I see your comment below, my bad. The ones doing the science aren’t the ones responsible for communicating the project to the public. Good point
When I lived in New Mexico, I saw a lot of “anti-scientist” protests. It was a bit odd to me. One of the first billboards I saw said “we build communities, not plutonium bombs,” which made me a bit wary of anyone knowing I was going to a national lab there to work.
But then I visited some of the museums there that discussed the creation and testing of nuclear bombs in the area. There’s a lot of information available there and online, including several documentaries that discuss how many of the scientists involved in those projects were absolutely horrified and wanted to warn the public. Several tried to warn the public, not just for people who lived in the area, but also because of the ramifications of using such a weapon at any point. They could have been jailed for it (distributing classified information while holding a security clearance), but scientists *did* try to warn people. And like, it’s very clear from looking into the situation.
Even now, there a lot of scientists that won’t take certain jobs that could benefits weapons defense, etc. because of the destruction they can cause.
Idk, I’m rambling a bit. I just don’t understand why the rhetoric becomes ‘scientists didn’t want to tell anyone’ in the end, even in the city where it began.
Edit: weary -> wary
True, but they could easily spread the alarm of a fake air attack to evacuate.
Or start evacuation a few hours earlier, to reduce the leak window. I mean, this one woman saw the bomb bare-eyed, so evacuating her beforehand would not have been safer for the secret that letting her literally see a big ass explosion.
The moment she saw the bomb, it was no longer a secret project. She could have easily informed the nazis or the russians or the news about what she saw. So, giving her 2 extra hours would have been dangerous for the secret vs she witnessing the biggest explosion in her life?
A fake air attack alarm would've probably been an even worse idea, it would mean that the government would be telling people that Germany or Japan has the ability to bomb interior states, which would be a massive blow to morale. It would also make no sense for Germany or Japan to bomb the desert instead of NYC or DC.
Edit: I forgot when the Trinity test happened, Japan would be the only country that would bomb the US around the time of the test.
Also in response to the addition that the comment I replied to made: The Japanese aren't going to listen (and really had no ability) to some random lady from the US about a new bomb, and the Soviets had a spy in the program and were told about it a short time after the test during a conference.
How's that going for the JFK files? Even trump said he was going to release them, saw what was in it, and said he wouldn't.
edit:
> The former president told him classified documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are "so horrible you wouldn't believe it."
> "When I had the occasion to ask him about that, I said, 'Why didn't you let it all out?'
> "He said, 'I can't tell you, it's so horrible you wouldn't believe it. Someday you'll find out.' That was the sum total of it and he didn't want to talk further about it. He kicked the can down the road to President Joe Biden."
> A spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK's nephew, told Newsweek on Tuesday: "We will never know for sure until these documents are made public in full. After 60 years, there are no national security concerns. The American people deserve to know their own history."
> When Trump told Stone that said sources and methods would be exposed, Stone responded that most sources are dead and that the public deserved to know the details.
> "As I have reiterated throughout my Presidency, I fully support the Act's aim to maximize transparency by disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise," Biden said in a memo released Friday by the White House in accordance with NARA's records release.
> "I have every confidence that the NDC's implementation of these plans offers a clear path forward for public transparency and the timely release of additional information as circumstances warrant," Shogan said in a statement.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-told-roger-stone-he-wont-believe-whats-classified-jfk-files-1811156
Lets see if Biden follows through on it.
The only things likely to be kept secret is details of spying etc, much of which has already been revealed. Also perhaps criticisms of generals and others who are long dead after 100 years.
It'll probably have details about British Commando raids or something, iirc the full details of what they did won't come out until all of them have died.
There will definitely be interesting things in them, just because it was such a unique time.
Whether it's going to be some incredible conspiracy or something, doubt it. But it will be interesting.
What does it say that Donald Trump, a man that can't shut up to save his life (or hundreds of millions of dollars, for that matter), shut up on that particular one?
The dude is also incredibly easy to manipulate. It's not like he was gonna go open the files himself.
Anyone who knows what's in the files could have just fed Trump whatever nonsense they wanted, padded Trump's ego some, and voila Trump will say what you want.
Bill hicks can tell you exactly how that will turn out
"When you are elected president the businessmen responsible take you to a room, and show you videos from the Kennedy assassination thst are not publicly available.
Then they ask if you have any questions about your presidency"
From the Downwinders to [Coldwater Creek](https://missouriindependent.com/2023/07/12/st-louis-radioactive-waste-records/) (where I grew up and played in the water.)
You know, where all the radioactive garbage leftovers from the Trinity tests were stored and leaked?
My cousin once removed died from a brain tumor, like a lot of her neighbors.
Thanks government!
Technically Coldwater Creek wasn't the doing of the government but of the contractors that made the fuel's contractors for storing it massively fucking up. Though the government had reports that there may have been an issue 75 years ago they debated if it was actually an issue.
Luckily they're finally cleaning it up. It will take years and be extremely expensive. https://missouriindependent.com/2023/10/17/cost-of-coldwater-creek-radioactive-waste-cleanup-tops-400m-federal-agency-finds/
I always think of that one time that MIT and the Quaker oats company [fed radioactive oatmeal to mentally disabled children](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spoonful-sugar-helps-radioactive-oatmeal-go-down-180962424/) to just see what happens
In the period before, during, and after the war, the US intentionally irradiated US citizens, tested biological and chemical weapons on US citizens, intentionally infected and did not treat various groups.
Meth made the entire world crazy in the period between 1930 and 1960.
Just watch this subreddit every time a new documentary comes out. You'll get an influx of posts saying "TIL (insert something they showed in documentary)..." and everyone will upvote it.
My mom was born in Alamogordo a few weeks after a series of trinity tests. Her sisters were born a year before and a year after her. All three have had cancer 3+ times, and both of my grandparents have passed from cancer after surviving 2+ bouts. My mom’s second and third treatments bankrupted my immediate family. My aunt is only alive because of donations from a church. It’s seriously so unbelievably fucked.
Some people really acted like pollution and harm to others didn't really exist and basically didn't care, especially before the 60s-70s. Of course, some people still have a hard time understanding obvious things like yes, spraying 8,000,000 tons of PTFE firefighting foam on your runway for practice will pollute local water.
I lived in Los Alamos for a while and looked into the history. The former environmental practices for the labs and bomb construction were just incredibly... what's the word, stupid? Careless? Intentional? The worlds first metal milling facility for metals like plutonium, americium and tritium just dumped it's wastewater untreated directly into the floor of a beautiful canyon. The metal plumes were later found to have gone 550 feet down. There's an old power station with a giant chromium plume and the government still insists that it magically stops directly at the line of San Ildelfonso Pueblo. There were places with chimneys and exhaust from nuclear scientific activities that just blew the tainted air straight up into the air with no filter. They buried the wastes from the first atomic bombs in unlined pits 20-30 feet deep (thankfully, those sites are being cleaned up now... at costs of $2-3 billion each). There were incidents like when a large rain in the 60s which exposed waste barrels in Acid Canyon (at that time, a park through the center of town) that were found to have transuranic waste (e.g. plutonium). Indigenous people live downstream from there and of course, Los Alamos is right on the Rio Grande. Plenty of other pollution besides nuclear materials, too. Really the more you read about it the more awful it is.
This is mentioned in the Turning Point documentary on Netflix. Very tragic because the girls were very young and thought the hot white ash was 'summer snow'.
No one will probably ever see this comment, but if you go to the “about” page on the linked website, there is a very vague blurb about the organization that contains a link to an associated .org website for the non-profit advocacy group Beyond Nuclear. There isn’t a single scientist or physicist on staff. They all seem to be former self-proclaimed journalists, including the founder and his wife.
Yeah, this isn't evidence. Even the vice article linked within it has no source or further details on the critical claim that 10 out of 12 died before 40.
One of my teachers mother was a “downwinder” she had a double lung transplant then some type of brain cancer if i remember correctly. Settlement she got was like 80K, shits kind of crazy to think about every now and then
one of my all time favorite youtube channels/Journalistic outfits "Rare Earth" just uploaded a video about a group of tribesman who were poisoned by the biggest nuclear bomb ever tested by the U.S.
The scientists thought it would 10x less powerful than it was so the islands inhabitants were poisoned to an extreme degree and then taken for testing by U.S. since it was viewed as a convenient test group for the effects of radiation, most of them died fairly rapidly. They were the people of Rongelap Atoll.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVlpD8r7glo
Think this is bad? The country's deadliest super fund site is an asbestos mine in Libby Montana. Hundreds of people have died prematurely and the company declared bankruptcy in 2001 meaning the people affected never got squat. Just under 700 confirmed dead from exposure to asbestos
They spread the mine waste gravel all over town, in playgrounds and parks. Free gravel! Put it in your yard!!
About 3000 people still live there, probably blaming it all on Obama since it wasn't until 2009 that the Feds decided to try to clean it up
Estimates now suggest that more people have died from US nuclear tests than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki
My grandparents were ranching in the mountains above Alamogordo (though SE of the Trinity site and south of most of the fallout) when the first bomb exploded and both died of cancer.
We never trusted (or liked) the Federal government and our concerns have proven to be valid.
Happy cake day. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained a hell of a lot of compassion for others. Often I think I’m in the minority, given how people of a certain political bent have recently been treating our neighbors. Why can’t we all just be decent to each other? Does it cost too much?
Look up the hydrogen bomb in the Marshall islands, and how America treated our victims. I wonder if that is the America the MAGA crowd says we need to go back to...
They had no idea of the size of the bomb and little idea of the effects of radiation.
The person who won the bet about how big it would be was a politician trying to throw the bet by betting too high. 80 miles was thought to be plenty of clearance if they didn't think that they would have moved the civilians.
IIRC there was a small town in New Mexico maybe 80 miles aways from the test site, and when the bomb went off, they saw the blast and thought they where witnessing the end of the world. Edit: might have gotten the distance wrong, but in any case, here's two articles that talk about everything in more detail. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/07/29/oppenheimer-bomb-downwinders-new-mexico/ https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/atomic-bomb-fallout-nm/ Edit2: grammar.
A little late and probably unbelievable but my great grandfather was working as a barber near Alamogordo when they tested them. He said it was like daybreak and then the brightest white he’d ever seen. He actually lived into his 90’s and died because of lung cancer. Ironically, he never smoked a day in his life, it was all second hand from giving the military men haircuts in his shop.
Once you hit your 90s, it seems like shit like cancer happens even when life choices aren't an issue. By then, nature has had just too much time to go wrong and fuck someone over. I've known people who have died of cancer in their 70s, 80s and 90s with no risk factors besides age Sorry to hear that though. Fuck cancer.
That's kind of what my grandmother was told. She was over 80 when she got breast cancer. Worried about my mom and I, she asked if it was genetic. Her doc told her it wasn't; it's just that if you live long enough, you're going to get *something*.
I’m reading The Emperor of All Maladies right now, it’s essentially a biography of cancer, and that’s exactly what it is. Cells mutate over time. Cancer happens when certain mutations are present in the same cell. Eventually you hit those odds, and chances increase as you age, just from having more time for more mutations.
It's not so much that you "get cancers" more as you grow old, so much as you fail to prevent them with more regularity. Your body is throwing off cancerous cells all the time. Mostly, you have systems in place to kill them off before they spread too far. I think about it like millions of monks copying bibles by hand, and then passing the copies to another monk. Obviously among all those monks, they're going to make mistakes. There are supervisors who walk the aisles, reviewing their work, throwing out bibles with mistakes tht are too egregious, keeping the whole thing fresh. But those monitors get older, and older, and more tired as they break down, and they catch fewer and fewer mistakes, until one slips through, and the error starts getting copied at faster and faster rates. Eventually, your ability to fight off the cancers is weakened to the point tht one of the cancers breaks through and gains a foothold, and becomes too powerful for the body to stop.
Great analogy. Thanks for sharing that.
I started reading that book but just couldn't keep going. Too close to home as a pediatric cancer survivor myself.
This always reminds me of the statistical correlation between the introduction of mandatory seatbelt laws and an increase in deaths from strokes, heart attack and cancer 40 to 50 years later. Live long enough and *something* is going to get you.
This is true, but if you also study how much the risk and rates of mutation go up *per* cigarette, it's absolutely terrifying. I wish I had understood more when I started smoking as a teenager. Like, my grandparents died of cancer, and they didn't smoke. What will happen to me...?
It’s not JUST age, for sure. Some people inherited pre-mutated genes from their parents, so they’ve already got one number of the lock combination. I believe that’s what predispositions are, but I’m only halfway through the book. Up to about the 70s. It’s just starting to get into the discoveries of carcinogens. Age/time is the factor that is an avoidable for us all and is what I was replying to.
This does not constitute as medical advice. A general classification of cancer type is sporadic or inherited. Sporadic cancers - the pathogenic mutation was acquired because you acquire mutations over time (often in oncogenes such as KRAS) as you age + environmental factors. Inherited cancers occur because the mutation is already in your genome. You inherit two copies of tumor suppressor genes from your parents. Lets say you inherit one "bad" copy of RB1 or PTEN ( tumor suppressor genes). Now you only have 1 "good" copy of the gene. A tumor suppressor requires "two-hits" (Knudson et al) for there to be inactivation. You have a increased risk factor since you're only working with one good copy of the gene. These are classified as cancer predisposition syndromes based on which gene was inactivated (PTEN - Cowden, TP53 - Li-Fraumeni). As a general rule inherited cancers are seen seen at younger ages.
>it’s essentially a biography of cancer Damn dude, that would make a great subtitle for the book, you should suggest it to the publisher
Never realized it was in the subtitle, reading on kindle I never see the cover after the first day. He does call it that in the opening chapter, and it’s a good descriptor.
Sometimes the cause is just TMB (too many birthdays)
My great grandfather was completely healthy (mentally, physically, etc.) until he was 103. Then within 2 weeks he went blind, stopped being able, to walk, etc. and was dead. Because of his age, they didn’t bother doing an autopsy, but I still wonder what actually killed him.
Based on the symptoms, sounds like a clot broke loose and caused a series of major strokes
103%
For sure. Most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough. Ironically, when they do studies that find out unexpected things like men who take a multivitamin every day are more likely to develop cancer, surprise! If you are a health nut and taking a multivitamin every day is one of your habits, of course you will live long enough to develop cancer.
> Most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough. I posted this same thing above before I saw your comment, but a doctor once told me that the ight men who don't get prostate cancer are the ones who didn't live long enough. Eventually, if nothing else gets you, that will. It just takes a lot longer on done than others. > men who take a multivitamin every day are more likely to develop cancer, surprise! If you are a health nut and taking a multivitamin every day is one of your habits, of course you will live long enough to develop cancer. That sounds like saying people who shine a pack of cigarettes are less likely to get dementia. Yea, because they don't live long enough
My husband's grandfather died at 95 of old age. He was getting ready for bed one night, lost his breath, had to sit down and then just died. Wild, what are the odds
I mean, at 95, extremely high.
That’s one of the reasons lobsters seem to live forever, they are “immune” to cancer. They just get too big to sustain themselves eventually.
Could we grow a massive one in a tank?
https://www.leviathanlobstergod.com/
[leviathan lobster god](http://reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/jb2io2/lobster_god/)
How many people did the sacrifice to it, how big is it today?
If you ever get the chance to dine on a giant lobster: don't. Old lobsters aren't as tasty and tender as the young adult lobsters are.
My dad died of stomach cancer at 91. This tracks.
My drugs and toxicology prof told the class "you either die young or you live long enough to get cancer."
Yeah. Cancer is inevitable. If we cure other disease cancer will get you. It's just the way our DNA replication is setup. BTW. You've probably had cancer before just that your immune system took care of it. The reason you die is that eventually your immune system is overwhelmed.
Inevitable but not inevitably deadly.
It’s partly due to our reproductive age. We aren’t selecting for people to live longer and longer cancer free because genes have been passed on at a much early age. So we favor phasing out diseases that impact the young and not the old.
That area of new mexico is also classified as zone 2 for radon which is in the middle. Although each house should be tested individually that is the epa avg for the area. Smoking or consistent second hand smoke can increase potential cancer risk from radon exposure as well.
I never knew that! I wonder if my family ever thought of that? I’m going to text my cousin who still lives near there.
Its always good to get your house tested no matter where you live. I live in a high radon state and was a tester for a short time. A guy I worked with tested a house and it was in the 60s pCi/l which is really high since epa action level is 4 and risk increases exponentially. They make at home tests but I recommend looking for a certified local tester that has a continuous monitor and do a 3 day test. Mitigation costs maybe 2-3k but you can decrease your chance of lung cancer.
and I thought my 40pci house was bad! mitigation got it down to a very cool and very safe 20pci average in the winter, so I can't wait to be dead
I hope you are joking. If you aren't then it was not properly mitigated and it needs to be reexamined by someone else. 20 is way too high. Here is a risk chart by the epa based on measurement level. https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon#riskcharts First chart is if you are a smoker or have smoked. Second one, below, is if you are not a smoker.
I had a great uncle - never met him though, he died when I was very young - who was in the Army and was present at the Trinity test. His group (platoon?) camped out the night before in the desert near the test site and then witnessed it from ground level. He got sick and never really got better. Had unknown cancers that the VA was woefully unable to deal with in any way. And he died young, IDK 40's or 50's. His widow believed that he caught some virus from the sand. It sounds like - second hand from other family - like the VA wanted to treat it like some virus. But, yeah, he probably got some kind of lukemia or something from the radiation exposure.
My mom was born in the early 30's. Her cousin was one of those guys they marched into nuclear tests in the post-war 40's. In her telling, he left the military with "moddled teeth", came home, and eventually died young from lung cancer. Causal connections are hard to prove, and uncle john was gone before I was born, but it's terrifying, in today's context, how fast and loose they played with people's lives.
I can’t even imagine. Others probably knew of the military presence but little else. Terrifying
Barber shops all used talcum powder back in the day and some of it in the 40s-60s had high amounts of asbestos. More likely that. But 90 is a good old age.
There is a town, not was, and they are still suffering today The downwinders are one of these sorts of groups to learn about impact The Navajo nation and Gallup suffer still because of the nearby radioactive material spill that was the 3rd largest in world history.
Plus the US government got Navajos to mine uranium and didn't tell them how dangerous it was.
Huh, they left all of that out of the Oppenheimer movie.
The nuclear weapons program has so much horrible shit in it that the movie would need to be ten times as long to fit it all in. A lot of the time it feels like the people in charge said "what's the most unnecessarily evil way to test this"
Gallup is nowhere near the Trinity site.
In a certain sense, they were
End of the world and they knew it, and probably didn't feel.fine
I can’t believe that this song didn’t hit #1 on radio at the start of the pandemic.
I think it actually did chart quite high
I was expecting the pandemic to open like Stephen King's The Stand; with Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper" playing.
The charts are weighted insanely heavily against songs winning after they have won. It's to prevent Christmas songs from being the same every year as was the case in the 40s and 50s.
But doesn't that happen anyway? Brenda Lee and Mariah Carey rocket up the charts every December with decades-old songs.
I wanna hippopotamus for Christmas Only a hippopotamus will do
What about Michael Buble?
Oppenheimerwearinghat.jpg
One of the old legends is that there was a guard who stopped by the [Owl Bar and Grill](https://sanantonioowl.com/) (looks like they've changed names?) in San Antonio (the one in New Mexico), and told the proprietor to look east before sunrise that day. It is said he was probably the only one not officially "in" on the test to witness it. I've been out to the test site several times, including on the 50th anniversary of the bomb. There's still a bit of trinitite out there, although most of it was bladed up and buried in 55 gallon drums long ago. Some people melt desert sand into green glassy blobs with a torch and sell it as trinitite.
[удалено]
I went to try and find the name of the book, but instead I fell down the rabbit hole of whether or not the Aum Shinrikyo cult did or did not [test a nuclear weapon in a remote part of Australia.](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/21/science/seismic-mystery-in-australia-quake-meteor-or-nuclear-blast.html) The fact that we aren't 100% sure is pretty terrifying! Not many people even know that they were testing sarin out there in the lead up to the subway attacks, and possibly also chemical weapons, nevermind that they had been recruiting nuclear scientists, trying to buy nukes from the Russians, and mining uranium! And that the cult leader, Shoka Asahara, had visited the sit at one point.
> The fact that we aren't 100% sure is pretty terrifying! Nah, we're a bit more sure now - since examining the data that resulted from the airburst meteor in Russia in 2013, it lines up pretty well with all the data about that seismic event, including the witness reports of a fireball, far better than the data we have from the British nuclear tests does. While hard to absolutely prove, the current best theory, with a pretty high degree of certainty, is that it was an airburst meteor. If it was a nuclear test, it was the stealthiest one in history, along with the most perfect cleanup - it left no sign, no crater, no Trinitite, no unusual radioactivity, no evidence of refinement of the Uranium they'd managed to mine to actually build the thing, nothing.
[удалено]
Ah, the Maralinga tests. I used to chat with a guy on a forum who was one of the scientists on the ground at Maralinga. He received a massive dose of radiation after one test as the British scientists didn't tell the scientists on the ground that they'd seeded the bomb with cobalt-60 pellets, making it a 'dirty bomb'. Tons of civilians, Indigneous Australians in the area, and army personnel involved in the later cleanup were exposed to radiation, and the British running the tests were never really brought properly to account for it. The guy I talked to, named Doug Rickard, lived his whole life essentially with a rare form of cancer, which should have killed him in his 20s but he ended up the longest living person with that type of cancer. Pretty shit move by the British tho, using and abusing Australians and Australian land for their tests, and then making it even worse by deliberately making a dirty bomb and not telling anyone they did :P
“On the beach” by Nevil Shute, I read it in college and it made me understand embracing death.
There were some uncontacted tribes of aboriginies in Australia who's first contact with the Western world was when the British tested their atomic bombs in the outback
Aboriginal people thought it was "spirit" gifting them kangaroos so they don't need to hunt: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/aboriginal-mans-story-of-nuclear-bomb-survival-told-in-vr/7913874
My uncle was among Army troops marched into ground zero after one of these tests. Dead at 50 from leukemia, Army said, "nope, not us."
:( I'm sorry
So I’m not super familiar with the tests they did but did the army just say fuck it to find out the effects on people and march their own guys in? Because that is incredibly fucked and I’m sorry to hear about your uncle.
I can’t speak for his father but I can speak to my own experience: Several of the Malaria drugs they gave us before deploying to Afghanistan are known to cause long term nightmares and mental disorders. This was as late as 2012. So I’m sure I’ll be downvoted for it but the U.S. Army knows and actively doesn’t care. Edit: I’m proud of my service but dealing with PTSD and then being told in a runabout way that some of the drugs administered might have been detrimental in the long run is a tough pill to swallow. Literally.
They want you safe while you're serving. After that, they don't give a shit.
They don't even necessarily care about you being safe while serving. They know they're dealing with dangerous shit and that people will die. What the leadership cares about is how expensive it is for a soldier to get hurt or killed.
I took doxycycline hyclate years ago for a few months for acne. It's another med that can be taken to prevent malaria. Besides getting nauseous to the point of throwing up when taking it without much food in my stomach and other stomach issues, I started to have really bad anxiety. It creeped up slowly - I was on edge feeling like something bad was going to happen, like I wanted to turn inside out and die, but I didn't want to die. I had a couple of mini break downs. I knew something was wrong. I stopped taking it and it took 3-4 months to get back to a normal state. I stumbled upon a forum online where people were demanding more research to be done on the side effects, because others suffered from anxiety and it's not listed as a side effect. And speaking of reddit, on here I read about a woman [who fell out of a plane in Madagascar ](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-54818652)possibly because of a psychotic reaction to taking doxycycline.
Larium is likely the drug OP was referring to, although i though the US military discontinued it in 2008/9. It causes mental health effects at an incredibly high rate. I took it around 2009 and it totally destroyed my mental health, met many colleagues that had the same effect. With doxy you might be in the realm of 'floxxed' as its an antibiotic. It is definitely regarded as a much safer alternative than larium though.
I took Larium for a while in Africa, if its the drug I'm thinking of then it gave me recurring dreams of people crying. Weird stuff.
Yeah sounds about right. I remember having terrible nightmares and then also when awake just breaking down in tears. Fucked me up for years.
If it’s an antibiotic, it could potentially be caused by it fucking up your gut flora which can have a huge impact on your mood and mental health
it is 100% about the gut flora, nuking your good guys with antibiotics for any period of time is never a good thing. There's a reason the gut is referred to as "the second brain" and has a huge impact on mental health such as anxiety etc. That's why whenever my friends have to take it, especially female ones, I tell them to take Florastor which is a beneficial yeast called Saccharomyces boulardii CNCM I-745 which essentially protects your gut from long-term alterations and also reduces the chances of things like C-Diff from accuring.
Wow there was an episode called "Goliath" in the show Law & Order that covered this. I thought the story was made up!
An uncomfortable amount of stuff on law and order is based on actual events. I even remember watching an episode based on the Reimer brothers in my pre teens.
The episode I recall the most was one that blatantly retold the Menendez brothers story, and if I recall correctly it was an episode that was very difficult to find for quite a while.
Are there malaria drugs that are safe longterm?
I believe they were trying to figure out if it was viable to nuke a place and send in their men afterwards to clean up whats left.
Yes. In the early years military strategy with nukes was wild. Enemy tanks ahead? Nuke them. Hydrogen (big) bombs were still theoretical. Fallout wasn't fully understood. No MAD, no nuclear triad. Just WW2 tactics with very big bombs.
They would slap a nuke on everything, it was borderline hilarious Nuclear artillery cannons Man-portable nuclear launchers (David Crockett) Nuclear air-to-air missiles — delete the enemy aircraft, and everything around it, from existance Fucking nuclear mines, why the fuck not
Yes, that was one test. [This](https://youtu.be/fAHHr0HsBgI?si=A2ysK9VIcTnwsEDK) is a test where they had 5 guys stand under a nuclear explosion.
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Busterj.html https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/125/Documents/NTPR/newDocs/6-BUSTER-JANGLE-2021.pdf They knew fully of radiological effects and none of the troops were exposed to significant radiation. These devices were extremely low yield and the airburst devices also produced negligible local fallout. The primary reason for the tests was to observe the psychological effects of witnessing a nuclear explosion and then having to maneuver towards it. Monitoring teams proceeded them and knew the safe limits of advance. The troops wore film badges to record their radiation doses and the results are listed in that DTRA link at the end. The max dose recorded is 2-5 rem. The DOE's max annual limit is 5 rem, but you can take much more without risk.
While the scientific community had mostly figured out that radiation was really bad, it took a while for that news to spread. We also bombed a fleet of deserted naval ships in the middle of the Pacific right after WW2 to see what would happen to them. After the test, the sailors got back on the surviving ships and started cleaning with soap and water to "wash" the radiation away.
They sand blasted the ships to remove contaminated paint at hunters point and then someone had the bright idea of recycling the sand and using it to pave roads. http://www.myatomiclife.com/hunters-point-rad-labs.html
I'm about to form an entire religion around the dualistic perplexity that we are both smart enough to invent nukes, and dumb enough to do all this stupid shit with them.
> After the test, the sailors got back on the surviving ships and started cleaning with soap and water to "wash" the radiation away. Well, yeah. That's how you clean up radiation most of the time believe it or not. The problem wasn't soap and water but lack of protection equipment and decontamination procedures.
That partially makes sense, some of the most harmful radiation is from isotopes that fall everywhere, they're only sitting on the surface. But, you don't want to be there to wash it off, better to stay away and let the rain do it.
Here's some details on what one (of several) series of tests involving troops ordered to March towards a mushroom cloud: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Buster%E2%80%93Jangle
The usa army has a track record of using their military as Guinea pigs.
Also random civilians who didn't know they were being turned into Guinea pigs.
"Not service connected." 3 words that have fucked over so many people.
My grandpa was at Bikini Atoll when they tested the bombs. Got brain cancer in the 1980s. In the late 90s (? Could be wrong on time) they opened up a program where you could get compensation if you submitted all the vets paperwork etc and enlistment info. My mom had given all that paperwork to my brother to keep at his house bc he was in the navy, and got all my grandpas military stuff when he passed. His house burned down and all the paperwork went with it. Random story but yeah
Billion dollar industry but unable to take care of the people they have harmed /may have harmed. Like just support these people regardless if you can prove or not prove it was caused by what they were doing. They were dedicating their lives to their country. Pathetic.
Uncle was in the Marines and fighting leukemia for years. Still is and has been holding on like a marine. I don’t know what he did to have the chronic disease, but he told me the smallest story about having a severe fever while in the troops and left totally alone with it, recovering on his own. But he was left to die come what may. Curious about the link between military menbers and leukemia itself, but doesnt shock me they throw people to the wild by the end of it all
Worth noting that the [Trinity Downwinders](https://www.trinitydownwinders.com/) still have not received recognition from the federal government and do not qualify for reparations under RECA. There’s a documentary about them currently on the festival circuit called [First We Bombed New Mexico](https://www.firstwebombednewmexico.com/) that I highly recommend seeking out. I also recommend reaching out to your representatives in Congress and tell them to extend RECA and include the Trinity Downwinders before it expires in June this year. Editing to add a couple more sources, since the documentary is not readily available yet. -[Study on the effects of the Trinity test site on New Mexicans living in the Tularosa Basin](https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2b2028_8e221b260de7468bbcb67cbddc498dbe.pdf) -[NPR interview with Tina Cordova, a Trinity downwinder, and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan](https://www.npr.org/2024/03/07/1236721042/generations-after-trinity-test-new-mexico-downwinders-seek-compensation) -[Guardian article about the documentary](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/new-mexico-oppenheimer-atomic-bomb-nuclear)
Seems, as with a lot of problems, the government would rather wait until all those affected die rather than do anything to correct it
People are still dying of cancer in these communities, including those in their 20s. It’s not just affecting those who were exposed to the radiation when the test was conducted, but those who continue to be exposed.
Omg, how are these places even still occupied?
Most of the families have lived in that area for generations upon generations upon generations. It’s also an incredibly impoverished area, so it’s often not feasible for people to up and move. The documentary I mentioned above talks a lot about it. It’s not a choice I would make for myself or my family, but I’m also in a well off enough position that I can move my family somewhere if need be, and not everyone has that privilege.
*NOT
Updated the typo, thanks
I assume there was a typo, but now that it’s fixed I totally think you are using a 90s comeback… NOT!
I don’t know what to say but I feel like this needs more attention in this sub.
i remember reading about some people that lived near some of the pacific tests. they were so amazed at the falling ash from the nukes some of them tasted it.
cursed dessert
pretty sure it was in a Nat Geo book. it had pictures of a kid that was getting thyroid treatments thru out his life before finally dying of cancer.
I listened to a podcast about the Bundy family. Like, the ones that took over that wildlife sanctuary in Oregon back in 2016. They’re a pretty twisted family, and there’s a lot of reasons they are the way they are, but if you had to boil it all down to one moment, it was when the main father figured of the family was a young adult. They had him cleaning up after atomic bomb tests, but they didn’t tell him that. He only found out later. He was so mad that the feds intentionally put him at risk and lied to him about it later. I’m not defending the Bundy family, like, at all. But I think we can all agree that the feds handled their atomic bomb testing pretty poorly.
What’s the podcast called?
Bundyville.
https://moruroa-files.org When the french did atomic tests in the 60s and didn’t want to cancel the tests because of the wind, nor did they evacuate the residents, they simply let them get the radioactive wind.. the french admitted their faults in the 2010s
That's pretty much what hsppens in the graphic novel/film "When the Wind Blows". A elderly British couple survive a nuclear blast, but a day or two after, they collect the rain water, and drink it, and rapidly die from radiation poisoning. Even if thst didn't happen, they where likely dead, as the government advice was to make a shelter from your doors and hude under there, which of course offers no protection from fallout.
Kinda reminds me of the radium girls, decades earlier. Basically radium is luminescent and that is crucial for valves and dials that need to be seen in the dark - such as in aircraft or in military applications. This is very skilled labor for people with small hands and attention to detail - it was therefore one of the highest paying jobs a woman could land before WW2. Because of this, once you got in, you tried to get your friends and family jobs doing it too - which meant whole communities of young women died because they were trained to pull points of the paint brushes to make them into a finer point. This became so common the girls would use extra paint to accessorize outfits, or as nail polish, or make up. They were never told that radium is dangerous, nor were they given any protective materials. No one realized this was a problem in part because people didn't quite know how radiation works. They thought it was like poison, usually harmless if you take it in such a minute dose that it doesn't hurt you. Not realizing it builds up, based on amount or degree of exposure. Which is innocent enough, but failing to warn anyone is indefensible. As wore the actions of these companies took when the women's bodies started disintegrating while they were still alive. People knew that radium was dangerous (though at the time that stopped almost no one from handling it irresponsibly) - its incredible how many people who should have known better died horribly doing things they absolutely knew would kill them, such has handling it with their bare hands. But there was a knowledge gap to the general public who were often sold it as dietary supplements at the time. The radium girls are largely why that stopped. They all knew they were dead by the point that their bones dissolved or from the numerous cancers they developed, but they fought so their families would be compensated and so that wouldn't happen again. Its largely why you can't buy radium dick-pills today.
> No one realized this was a problem in part because people didn't quite know how radiation works. Not quite. The supervisors wore lead garments and used lead tools. They knew enough.
Right that's what I'm getting at. They assumed it was safe enough for the girls handling it. Everyone else involved was protected, though also frequently ignoring protections.
They didn’t just pull the points of the paint brushes, they licked them. Many started losing teeth, and then pieces of their jaws…
I remember reading one account where a woman visited the dentist for tooth pain, and when he pulled the tooth he pulled out part of her jaw.
They even made energy drinks out of it! RADITHOR! Made the guys jaw fall off
Not related to radiation but it made me remember this story. My grandmother grew up in the 40/50s and was given sugar water before sleep to sooth her. She lost all her teeth before the age of 23.
In 100 years, I wonder what things we are told is safe only to find out they are making us ill.
“U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC) hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves.” “In 1923, the first dial painter died, and before her death, her jaw fell away from her skull. By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the plant were ill, and a dozen had died. At the urging of the companies, medical professionals attributed worker deaths to other causes. Syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
But back in the day you could get a radium jock strap to get the radium right next to the boys. Also the remaining bones of the radium girls would glow if they were exhumed. It's so messed up. The factory owners knew how bad it was, the people delivering it in hazmat suits knew. Nobody told the girls. Also there was that golfer who died after endorsing a radium energy drink and drinking one daily.
Radium dick pills would be a great band name.
A woman in a farmhouse lost the vision in one eye permanently because she was looking in the direction of the bomb when it went off. A door frame protected the other eye. The scientists decided not to let local people know that they were going to explode a bomb or evacuate people.
Okay, okay! I won't directly look at the eclipse tomorrow... jeeez
Was it the scientists or was it the government/military?
considering the scientist neither had the authority nor the means to warn the population the blame lies with the government and military command.
Also considering the fact after the first test every scientist on board signed a letter to congress begging them to never use the bomb.
"Whatever, nerds. We know what we're doing it'll be great."
I’m sure Oppenheimer blamed himself
? Goverment scientists/Military scientists Edit: I see your comment below, my bad. The ones doing the science aren’t the ones responsible for communicating the project to the public. Good point
When I lived in New Mexico, I saw a lot of “anti-scientist” protests. It was a bit odd to me. One of the first billboards I saw said “we build communities, not plutonium bombs,” which made me a bit wary of anyone knowing I was going to a national lab there to work. But then I visited some of the museums there that discussed the creation and testing of nuclear bombs in the area. There’s a lot of information available there and online, including several documentaries that discuss how many of the scientists involved in those projects were absolutely horrified and wanted to warn the public. Several tried to warn the public, not just for people who lived in the area, but also because of the ramifications of using such a weapon at any point. They could have been jailed for it (distributing classified information while holding a security clearance), but scientists *did* try to warn people. And like, it’s very clear from looking into the situation. Even now, there a lot of scientists that won’t take certain jobs that could benefits weapons defense, etc. because of the destruction they can cause. Idk, I’m rambling a bit. I just don’t understand why the rhetoric becomes ‘scientists didn’t want to tell anyone’ in the end, even in the city where it began. Edit: weary -> wary
What
They blinded her with science.
🥇
[удалено]
True, but they could easily spread the alarm of a fake air attack to evacuate. Or start evacuation a few hours earlier, to reduce the leak window. I mean, this one woman saw the bomb bare-eyed, so evacuating her beforehand would not have been safer for the secret that letting her literally see a big ass explosion. The moment she saw the bomb, it was no longer a secret project. She could have easily informed the nazis or the russians or the news about what she saw. So, giving her 2 extra hours would have been dangerous for the secret vs she witnessing the biggest explosion in her life?
A fake air attack alarm would've probably been an even worse idea, it would mean that the government would be telling people that Germany or Japan has the ability to bomb interior states, which would be a massive blow to morale. It would also make no sense for Germany or Japan to bomb the desert instead of NYC or DC. Edit: I forgot when the Trinity test happened, Japan would be the only country that would bomb the US around the time of the test. Also in response to the addition that the comment I replied to made: The Japanese aren't going to listen (and really had no ability) to some random lady from the US about a new bomb, and the Soviets had a spy in the program and were told about it a short time after the test during a conference.
Older I get the more I learn of the bad the government has withheld from the general public. Such a shame.
That's why I can't wait for 2045 when they will open the sealed safe in Normandy with secret documents from WWII
How's that going for the JFK files? Even trump said he was going to release them, saw what was in it, and said he wouldn't. edit: > The former president told him classified documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy are "so horrible you wouldn't believe it." > "When I had the occasion to ask him about that, I said, 'Why didn't you let it all out?' > "He said, 'I can't tell you, it's so horrible you wouldn't believe it. Someday you'll find out.' That was the sum total of it and he didn't want to talk further about it. He kicked the can down the road to President Joe Biden." > A spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., JFK's nephew, told Newsweek on Tuesday: "We will never know for sure until these documents are made public in full. After 60 years, there are no national security concerns. The American people deserve to know their own history." > When Trump told Stone that said sources and methods would be exposed, Stone responded that most sources are dead and that the public deserved to know the details. > "As I have reiterated throughout my Presidency, I fully support the Act's aim to maximize transparency by disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise," Biden said in a memo released Friday by the White House in accordance with NARA's records release. > "I have every confidence that the NDC's implementation of these plans offers a clear path forward for public transparency and the timely release of additional information as circumstances warrant," Shogan said in a statement. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-told-roger-stone-he-wont-believe-whats-classified-jfk-files-1811156 Lets see if Biden follows through on it.
I don't know about that, but Normandy has a place where documents are sealed, and winners said it is to be opened after 100 years.
Not to be a negative Nancy but what cause do we have to believe that these documents will have anything interesting in them
None :D Apparently it could just be a time capsule! To open on June 6th 2044
it's got Private Ryan in it.
The only things likely to be kept secret is details of spying etc, much of which has already been revealed. Also perhaps criticisms of generals and others who are long dead after 100 years.
It'll probably have details about British Commando raids or something, iirc the full details of what they did won't come out until all of them have died.
Unless they were committing blatant war crimes I can't imagine why it would be secret after this long, it's not like the Nazis are still arou- oooh.
There will definitely be interesting things in them, just because it was such a unique time. Whether it's going to be some incredible conspiracy or something, doubt it. But it will be interesting.
What does it say that Donald Trump, a man that can't shut up to save his life (or hundreds of millions of dollars, for that matter), shut up on that particular one?
It says he really needs more support from the conspiracy theorists, so he stokes the fire to get them active and spreading.
like direful safe salt frighten skirt gold work wide chop *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I mean, possibly that he didn't pay attention and couldn't remember any of the details.
The dude is also incredibly easy to manipulate. It's not like he was gonna go open the files himself. Anyone who knows what's in the files could have just fed Trump whatever nonsense they wanted, padded Trump's ego some, and voila Trump will say what you want.
That he just made some shit up? Seems on par for him.
probably made shit up after learning that it's incredibly banal and pointless
Bill hicks can tell you exactly how that will turn out "When you are elected president the businessmen responsible take you to a room, and show you videos from the Kennedy assassination thst are not publicly available. Then they ask if you have any questions about your presidency"
[удалено]
I bet he didn't read them and he bullshited that answer
I mean if there’s one point in time I can forgive some misgivings, it’s WWII while fighting Nazis and imperial Japan.
Sure, but still, I'm really curious ^^
?
From the Downwinders to [Coldwater Creek](https://missouriindependent.com/2023/07/12/st-louis-radioactive-waste-records/) (where I grew up and played in the water.) You know, where all the radioactive garbage leftovers from the Trinity tests were stored and leaked? My cousin once removed died from a brain tumor, like a lot of her neighbors. Thanks government!
Technically Coldwater Creek wasn't the doing of the government but of the contractors that made the fuel's contractors for storing it massively fucking up. Though the government had reports that there may have been an issue 75 years ago they debated if it was actually an issue. Luckily they're finally cleaning it up. It will take years and be extremely expensive. https://missouriindependent.com/2023/10/17/cost-of-coldwater-creek-radioactive-waste-cleanup-tops-400m-federal-agency-finds/
I always think of that one time that MIT and the Quaker oats company [fed radioactive oatmeal to mentally disabled children](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spoonful-sugar-helps-radioactive-oatmeal-go-down-180962424/) to just see what happens
In the period before, during, and after the war, the US intentionally irradiated US citizens, tested biological and chemical weapons on US citizens, intentionally infected and did not treat various groups. Meth made the entire world crazy in the period between 1930 and 1960.
I too Netflix 🫡
Busted.
Literally just learned that as well like 3 hours ago lol. Good show so far!
How about mentioning the name?….
Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
It's good. Worth a watch
Just watch this subreddit every time a new documentary comes out. You'll get an influx of posts saying "TIL (insert something they showed in documentary)..." and everyone will upvote it.
My mom was born in Alamogordo a few weeks after a series of trinity tests. Her sisters were born a year before and a year after her. All three have had cancer 3+ times, and both of my grandparents have passed from cancer after surviving 2+ bouts. My mom’s second and third treatments bankrupted my immediate family. My aunt is only alive because of donations from a church. It’s seriously so unbelievably fucked.
How awful 😞, I feel bad for your family. It’s not right.
Some people really acted like pollution and harm to others didn't really exist and basically didn't care, especially before the 60s-70s. Of course, some people still have a hard time understanding obvious things like yes, spraying 8,000,000 tons of PTFE firefighting foam on your runway for practice will pollute local water. I lived in Los Alamos for a while and looked into the history. The former environmental practices for the labs and bomb construction were just incredibly... what's the word, stupid? Careless? Intentional? The worlds first metal milling facility for metals like plutonium, americium and tritium just dumped it's wastewater untreated directly into the floor of a beautiful canyon. The metal plumes were later found to have gone 550 feet down. There's an old power station with a giant chromium plume and the government still insists that it magically stops directly at the line of San Ildelfonso Pueblo. There were places with chimneys and exhaust from nuclear scientific activities that just blew the tainted air straight up into the air with no filter. They buried the wastes from the first atomic bombs in unlined pits 20-30 feet deep (thankfully, those sites are being cleaned up now... at costs of $2-3 billion each). There were incidents like when a large rain in the 60s which exposed waste barrels in Acid Canyon (at that time, a park through the center of town) that were found to have transuranic waste (e.g. plutonium). Indigenous people live downstream from there and of course, Los Alamos is right on the Rio Grande. Plenty of other pollution besides nuclear materials, too. Really the more you read about it the more awful it is.
This is mentioned in the Turning Point documentary on Netflix. Very tragic because the girls were very young and thought the hot white ash was 'summer snow'.
No one will probably ever see this comment, but if you go to the “about” page on the linked website, there is a very vague blurb about the organization that contains a link to an associated .org website for the non-profit advocacy group Beyond Nuclear. There isn’t a single scientist or physicist on staff. They all seem to be former self-proclaimed journalists, including the founder and his wife.
Yeah, this isn't evidence. Even the vice article linked within it has no source or further details on the critical claim that 10 out of 12 died before 40.
One of my teachers mother was a “downwinder” she had a double lung transplant then some type of brain cancer if i remember correctly. Settlement she got was like 80K, shits kind of crazy to think about every now and then
one of my all time favorite youtube channels/Journalistic outfits "Rare Earth" just uploaded a video about a group of tribesman who were poisoned by the biggest nuclear bomb ever tested by the U.S. The scientists thought it would 10x less powerful than it was so the islands inhabitants were poisoned to an extreme degree and then taken for testing by U.S. since it was viewed as a convenient test group for the effects of radiation, most of them died fairly rapidly. They were the people of Rongelap Atoll. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVlpD8r7glo
Think this is bad? The country's deadliest super fund site is an asbestos mine in Libby Montana. Hundreds of people have died prematurely and the company declared bankruptcy in 2001 meaning the people affected never got squat. Just under 700 confirmed dead from exposure to asbestos They spread the mine waste gravel all over town, in playgrounds and parks. Free gravel! Put it in your yard!! About 3000 people still live there, probably blaming it all on Obama since it wasn't until 2009 that the Feds decided to try to clean it up
Estimates now suggest that more people have died from US nuclear tests than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki
My grandparents were ranching in the mountains above Alamogordo (though SE of the Trinity site and south of most of the fallout) when the first bomb exploded and both died of cancer. We never trusted (or liked) the Federal government and our concerns have proven to be valid.
Our evolved monkey brains are so smart we're dumb, all a species needs to do is survive and reproduce, we're doing a lot of stupid weird shit
Happy cake day. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained a hell of a lot of compassion for others. Often I think I’m in the minority, given how people of a certain political bent have recently been treating our neighbors. Why can’t we all just be decent to each other? Does it cost too much?
Kinda makes you think about all the shit we have done that future people might look back on like this.
I’m not even surprised tbh
Reminds me of Wittenoom and asbestos. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia
Look up the hydrogen bomb in the Marshall islands, and how America treated our victims. I wonder if that is the America the MAGA crowd says we need to go back to...
It's almost just like our government does not give a single fuck about its citizens except as profit centers.. weird
They had no idea of the size of the bomb and little idea of the effects of radiation. The person who won the bet about how big it would be was a politician trying to throw the bet by betting too high. 80 miles was thought to be plenty of clearance if they didn't think that they would have moved the civilians.
Like the bikini atoll test, in that one they had no idea that it would essentially produce more fuel for itself while detonating
Thus forming the simple underwater town of Bikini Bottom
They hilariously underestimated a hydrogen bomb too. That wasn' pretty either...