You’ve Seen Oppenheimer. Now Read American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War
Making the invisible visible – documenting the horror of American above ground nuclear tests
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” – Jonathan Swift
America conducted a nuclear war. It took place in Nevada and lasted 11 years. One hundred nuclear weapons were detonated. The unwitting combatants were American citizens.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It is well-documented historical fact. It is one of the more shameful episodes in 20th century American history.
From 1951 to 1962 the United States conduced 100 above ground atmospheric nuclear weapons tests at a 680-square-mile (1,800 km) location about 100 miles east of Las Vegas known as the Nevada Test Site.
During this time the number and size (or yield) of these weapons increased, especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Once the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was signed by the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain, most above ground tests ceased.
Underground testing of nuclear weapons, which spread far less radiation into the air, continued until 1992. A total of 828 underground nuclear weapons tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site. Above ground nuclear weapons testing by other countries continued until 1980.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/test-ban-treaty
The American above ground atmospheric tests were conducted with zero regard given to the effect of radioactive fallout on people, livestock, crops and the environment. The effects of this radiation were documented as far east as St. Louis, Mo. Significant levels of nuclear fallout was detected in milk and other food crops in Missouri during the above ground testing era.
During the 11 years above ground nuclear weapons testing took place, 100 nuclear fallout clouds floated across the American West and eastward, borne on the jet stream that creates the prevailing winds from the west, with radiation levels similar to those released by the Chernobyl disaster.
These atmospheric nuclear weapons tests made Guinea pigs of thousands of Americans living in Nevada, Utah and other western states near and downwind from the test site. Many of them paid a terrible price. Millions more living further east across the Rocky mountains and plains and into the Midwest were also exposed. Few places in the United States did not receive at least some radio active fallout during this time.
Cancer Incidence in an Area of Radioactive Fallout Downwind From the Nevada Test Site
Carl J. Johnson, MD
JAMA. 1984;251(2):230-236. doi:10.1001/jama.1984.033402600340
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/390963
A top-secret Atomic Energy Commission memo described citizens living downwind of the radiation clouds as "a low-use segment of the population." Civilian employees and military personnel exposed to radiation at the Nevada Test Site were also treated with similar callousness.
During the 1950 and early 1960s, mushroom clouds from atmospheric tests could be seen for almost 100 miles (160 km). The city of Las Vegas experienced noticeable seismic effects. The mushroom clouds, which could easily be seen from the downtown hotels, became tourist attractions.
American officials consistently told residents living in the areas downwind that there was no danger. People living in the path of the radiation were actually encouraged to "participate in a moment of history" by coming outside to watch the fallout clouds drifting over their homes.
Little did they know their own government was signing the death warrants of many of them in what amounted to a secret war conducted on U.S. soil against an unsuspecting and trusting civilian population.
In 1983, New York photographer Carole Gallagher gave up a successful career, moved to Utah and spent the next ten years networking among radiation survivors of the United States government’s above ground nuclear testing program. Gallagher found people willing to be photographed and interviewed them to tell their stories.
The result was her extraordinary 461-page book, American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War, published by The MIT Press in March 1993.
Gallagher gathered shocking evidence of government indifference, pure callousness and outright cover-ups.
In the forward to American Ground Zero, Keith Schneider writes above ground atmospheric nuclear testing was "the most prodigiously reckless program of scientific experimentation in United States history.”
The sheer scale of suffering depicted in American Ground Zero is astounding. In some Utah towns, Gallagher documented cases of cancer in each and every home. No one was untouched by the radiation.
Westerly winds routinely carried the fallout from above-ground nuclear testing directly through St. George, Utah and southern Utah. Increases in cancers, such as leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers, were reported from the mid-1950s onward. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/390963
Each of photographic portraits of victims is accompanied by the bitter and stoic testimony of people, many of the members of the Mormon church, who otherwise would be the most conservative and patriotic of Americans.
The last atmospheric nuclear weapon test detonation at the site, known as "Little Feller I" part of Operation Sunbeam, took place on July 17, 1962. By then, millions of Americans had been exposed to one degree or another to radiation from fallout.
American Ground Zero exposed an extremely disturbing national scandal. Yet by the time of its publication many of the victims of the government’s blatant lies and obdurate attitude, had died or soon would.
The American government has never been held to account for the nuclear crimes committed in an undeclared war on it own citizens fought on its own soil.
However, today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency includes some information about nuclear fallout and its origins on its website. The EPA also maintains a network of radiation sensors around the United States.
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-fallout-nuclear-weapons-testing
Today the sensors are mainly used to study background radiation.
Gallagher essay
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096340213508625
Nevada Test Site
So intensely disturbing yet also unsurprising to my generation. Who were those in control in those agencies of our government who considered fellow humans expendable? Veterans of war who had become fatalistic, even cruel in their decisions? We can hope that government oversight now does a better job.
Am sure I’m not alone when I find it ironic that those who are most against regulations live in areas that are most poisonous to themselves and their communities. That may sound paternalistic but in fact what good are laws governing such things when they are despised by those whose lives and their children’s could be increasingly protected.