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Both my paternal grandparents were some of the downwinders in Utah it alludes to. They were exposed to fallout from around 200 atmospheric nuclear tests, the va

Both my paternal grandparents were some of the downwinders in Utah it alludes to. They were exposed to fallout from around 200 atmospheric nuclear tests, the vast majority of which were far more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy. That is an amount of radiation many orders of magnitude greater than Fukushima. I've researched it extensively and am convinced it is genuinely one of the darkest and most disturbing parts of US 20th Century history and one that remains glossed over to this day The Atomic Energy Commission had plenty of evidence to believe that the fallout would be harmful to anyone downwind yet reassured the local populations that it was actually healthy due to "hormesis" and encouraged them to watch the detonations and drink contaminated milk while they themselves wore protective gear and followed proper protocol. There were several proposed test sites that would have sent the fallout relatively harmlessly into the Atlantic yet they chose one in an extremely dusty area upwind of population centers which were almost entirely Native Americans and Mormons. At best it was a blatant disregard for human life that prioritized the budget of the AEC over minimizing harm to innocent people and at worst it was an intentional case of unethical human experimentation. It certainly was when they forced infantry to march through mushroom clouds without any decontamination or protective gear. As for my grandparents, one lost his stomach and gallbladder and went from a muscular ~200 lb outdoorsman to a 90lb skeleton dependent on a feeding tube. Our grandmother died unexpectedly from a horrific variety of lung cancer 10 years later. He lived another 10 years in absolute misery. There are thousands of stories like these in Utah, many of them even more tragic. Despite their oncologists testifying that it was essentially impossible for their cancers to have been caused by anything other than nuclear weapons exposure, neither received the paltry $50,000 compensation because of bureaucratic technicalities.

rainbowmverse 9y ago
>> "At best it was a blatant disregard for human life that prioritized the budget of the AEC over minimizing harm to innocent people and at worst it was an intentional case of unethical human experimentation." Eugenics was pretty popular globally around then, so the latter is more likely.
- srtjstjsj 9y ago
  Eugenics was popular in the 1920s-1940s This event was AFTER the end of an anti-eugenics World War.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States >> The state of California was at the vanguard of the American eugenics movement, performing about 20,000 sterilizations or one third of the 60,000 nationwide from 1909 up until the 1960s >> While California had the highest number of sterilizations, North Carolina's eugenics program which operated from 1933 to 1977, was the most aggressive of the 32 states that had eugenics programs.[40] An IQ of 70 or lower meant sterilization was appropriate in North Carolina.[41] The North Carolina Eugenics Board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards.[41] Of all states, only North Carolina gave social workers the power to designate people for sterilization.[40] "Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control."[41] And you can still see people promoting eugenics to this day right here on HN. It never went out of style, it's just harder to be as explicit about it now.
rosser 9y ago
I lived in UT for several years. I talked with I don't even know how many people who had family in the southern part of the state back then, more or less all of whom suffered similarly.
Finnucane 9y ago
The "Dirty Harry" test mentioned in the article has been the subject of one or two books. At the time, the AEC did not, unsurprisingly, adequately alert the folks in St. George as to the nature of the unusual grey powder falling like snow on their town. It took decades of lawsuits to get the government to admit what really happened.
kilroy123 9y ago
Puts on tin foil hat... They probably did this intentionally to see what would happen. I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly monitored doctors reports, in the area, as well.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  No tinfoil hat needed if you consider the Tuskegee syphilis experiment which started in the thirties and continued after it was well known in the late 40s that penicillin treated it. it seems that a general above reproach type attitude existed among certain government based/funded research groups then
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Or, even later than Tuskegee, biowarfare tests involving the general population, starting with the San Francisco test in 1950: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2015/06/28/san-fran-serratia/#.WThx3yNlBnE http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2015/06/28/san...
  - nylonstrung 9y ago
    The AEC and DoD did a ton of human radiation experiments in the vein of that without any informed consent. For one they straight up irradiated prisoners and gave their children birth defects. One time a guy got in a car accident and went to the hospital and they injected him with plutonium to see what would happen. In another incident they gave mentally disabled children radioactive materials in their breakfast and told them they were vitamins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments Pretty sure most of this was post Nuremburg as well. We talk about how fucked up Mengele was and a lot of this is on the same level. No one was ever brought to justice for this stuff as far as I know
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  To be honest, if I was in a position to make that decision, I'd be highly tempted to use the bombs just to see what would happen.
sharkweek 9y ago
Are there any books on this (or any other reading you recommend)? I'd love to dive in a bit more, sounds fascinating.
delegate 9y ago
Those people were designing devices to kill large numbers of (innocent) civilians. Given those goals that they had, why would anyone expect them to behave 'ethically' or care about the side effects of their activity ? Of course that was a 'blatant disregard for human life', since that was the very essence of the technology being developed.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > Given those goals that they had, why would anyone expect them to behave 'ethically' or care about the side effects of their activity ? Possibly, yes. An argument can be made that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused less overall loss of life than an invasion or prolonged conflict (even if heavily weighted to one side). Wars are far more costly in human lives and suffering if neither side can get enough advantage to win and they become protracted. There's also the question of how many large conflicts were prevented since the time the creation of atomic weapons because it was seen as too costly, or one side was vastly superior because of them. This is a very complex topic, and regardless of what you think of it, those developing the weapons might have thought differently. When assessing the motivations and considerations of those people, using only your own assessment and moral calculus is insufficient.
  - hisham_hm 9y ago
    > Possibly, yes. What is your "yes" referring to? That was not a yes-no answer. > An argument can be made that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused less overall loss of life than an invasion or prolonged conflict (even if heavily weighted to one side). Not only completely weighted to one side, but consisting in its vast majority of civilians. > There's also the question of how many large conflicts were prevented since the time the creation of atomic weapons because it was seen as too costly, or one side was vastly superior because of them. There has been no "war to end all wars", in spite of hopeful predictions. We haven't had WW3, but "one side being vastly superior" has not prevented the US from being engaged near constantly in various wars since after WW2. It is indeed a very complex topic, but questioning the ethics of those involved in the development of atomic weapons, especially given all we know about the way it was done, is a completely reasonable stance.
mixmastamyk 9y ago
I grew up next to the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory just north west of Los Angeles. Due to a cover up, no one really knew they built a nuclear reactor there in a warehouse-type building with no containment, that of course had a meltdown and explosion a year or two later. All of my parent's generation from the area died by roughly 60 years old of cancer. It still boggles my mind that anyone would be so reckless whenever I think about it. Never underestimate the government's (and associated corp's) capacity for pure evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Be careful, that sounds like a critique of nuclear energy, which tends to attract a strong reaction. Typical argument is that more people died installing solar cells than in that type of incident.
- FrozenVoid 9y ago
  >Never underestimate the government's (and associated corp's) capacity for pure evil. Except when the topic is water fluoridation, vaccines or genetically modified crops, then its all right and above criticism.
  - echelon 9y ago
    The things you named are safe and yield quantifiable benefits. Ionizing radiation, on the other hand, is entirely deleterious.
    - tomsmeding 9y ago
      Relatively safe; we still don't know for sure whether there are no negative consequences. But definitely in another league than ionizing radiation.
      - delazeur 9y ago
        > we still don't know for sure whether there are no negative consequences That is a carefully-worded statement that will always be true about everything.
samstave 9y ago
My grandfather was a nuclear eng for GE his entire career and was one of the engineers who helped run hanford... He died of severe esophageal cancer in the late 90's and they were a part of a class action of nukes against GE, which they won through settlement - but GE would not admit that the cancers were caused by them being nukes at places such as Hanford...
- Spooky23 9y ago
  GE has a history of all sorts of stuff like that. In addition to dumping PCBs all over, they "donated" contaminated waste oil to counties and towns around their Schenectady and Washington County, NY plants. The counties in turn used the oil to tar rural roads (basically dump oil on the road and cover with gravel). The result are probable clusters of lung and kidney cancers among residents along the roads.
JKCalhoun 9y ago
My wife comments from time to time on how all her uncles in Nebraska died of cancer. I have since found out that fallout from the Nevada tests fell as far away as Nebraska. So, who knows....
- mirimir 9y ago
  Stuff punched into the stratosphere, hit the jet stream, and then came down where storms went high enough. So it wasn't simple downwind dilution. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/8637173_fig2_Fig-2-Estimated-137-Cs-deposition-density-Bq-m-A-2-from-NTS-fallout-across-the https://www.researchgate.net/figure/8637173_fig2_Fig-2-Estim... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8637173_The_geographic_distribution_of_radionuclide_deposition_across_the_continental_US_from_atmospheric_nuclear_testing https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8637173_The_geograp...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mirimir 9y ago
I vaguely recall reading that health physics experts recommended siting the US nuclear weapon test range in North Carolina.[0] Perhaps on or near Hatteras Island. Because "much of the fallout would come down over the ocean".[0] But on the other hand, "fallout would have contaminated the fishing resources off the coast" and it "would have allowed Russian/Cuban ships to monitor the tests and collect samples".[0] And given what we know now about stratospheric injection, there would likely have been hotspots in Europe. 0) https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/us-east-coast-test-site.906922/ https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/us-east-coast-test-sit...
- nylonstrung 9y ago
  From what I read about it the Nevada Test Site placement was probably most heavily informed by its proximity to Los Alamos and the logistical advantages that would confer rather than any safety concerns.
agumonkey 9y ago
Impressive how our great countries can be so shitty when nation takes precedence over citizen.

rainbowmverse 9y ago

>> "At best it was a blatant disregard for human life that prioritized the budget of the AEC over minimizing harm to innocent people and at worst it was an intentional case of unethical human experimentation." Eugenics was pretty popular globally around then, so the latter is more likely.

srtjstjsj 9y ago
Eugenics was popular in the 1920s-1940s This event was AFTER the end of an anti-eugenics World War.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States >> The state of California was at the vanguard of the American eugenics movement, performing about 20,000 sterilizations or one third of the 60,000 nationwide from 1909 up until the 1960s >> While California had the highest number of sterilizations, North Carolina's eugenics program which operated from 1933 to 1977, was the most aggressive of the 32 states that had eugenics programs.[40] An IQ of 70 or lower meant sterilization was appropriate in North Carolina.[41] The North Carolina Eugenics Board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards.[41] Of all states, only North Carolina gave social workers the power to designate people for sterilization.[40] "Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control."[41] And you can still see people promoting eugenics to this day right here on HN. It never went out of style, it's just harder to be as explicit about it now.

rosser 9y ago

I lived in UT for several years. I talked with I don't even know how many people who had family in the southern part of the state back then, more or less all of whom suffered similarly.

Finnucane 9y ago

The "Dirty Harry" test mentioned in the article has been the subject of one or two books. At the time, the AEC did not, unsurprisingly, adequately alert the folks in St. George as to the nature of the unusual grey powder falling like snow on their town. It took decades of lawsuits to get the government to admit what really happened.

kilroy123 9y ago

Puts on tin foil hat... They probably did this intentionally to see what would happen. I wouldn't be surprised if they secretly monitored doctors reports, in the area, as well.

Shivetya 9y ago
No tinfoil hat needed if you consider the Tuskegee syphilis experiment which started in the thirties and continued after it was well known in the late 40s that penicillin treated it. it seems that a general above reproach type attitude existed among certain government based/funded research groups then
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Or, even later than Tuskegee, biowarfare tests involving the general population, starting with the San Francisco test in 1950: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2015/06/28/san-fran-serratia/#.WThx3yNlBnE http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/bodyhorrors/2015/06/28/san...
- nylonstrung 9y ago
  The AEC and DoD did a ton of human radiation experiments in the vein of that without any informed consent. For one they straight up irradiated prisoners and gave their children birth defects. One time a guy got in a car accident and went to the hospital and they injected him with plutonium to see what would happen. In another incident they gave mentally disabled children radioactive materials in their breakfast and told them they were vitamins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments Pretty sure most of this was post Nuremburg as well. We talk about how fucked up Mengele was and a lot of this is on the same level. No one was ever brought to justice for this stuff as far as I know
dingo_bat 9y ago
To be honest, if I was in a position to make that decision, I'd be highly tempted to use the bombs just to see what would happen.

sharkweek 9y ago

Are there any books on this (or any other reading you recommend)? I'd love to dive in a bit more, sounds fascinating.

delegate 9y ago

Those people were designing devices to kill large numbers of (innocent) civilians. Given those goals that they had, why would anyone expect them to behave 'ethically' or care about the side effects of their activity ? Of course that was a 'blatant disregard for human life', since that was the very essence of the technology being developed.

kbenson 9y ago
> Given those goals that they had, why would anyone expect them to behave 'ethically' or care about the side effects of their activity ? Possibly, yes. An argument can be made that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused less overall loss of life than an invasion or prolonged conflict (even if heavily weighted to one side). Wars are far more costly in human lives and suffering if neither side can get enough advantage to win and they become protracted. There's also the question of how many large conflicts were prevented since the time the creation of atomic weapons because it was seen as too costly, or one side was vastly superior because of them. This is a very complex topic, and regardless of what you think of it, those developing the weapons might have thought differently. When assessing the motivations and considerations of those people, using only your own assessment and moral calculus is insufficient.
- hisham_hm 9y ago
  > Possibly, yes. What is your "yes" referring to? That was not a yes-no answer. > An argument can be made that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused less overall loss of life than an invasion or prolonged conflict (even if heavily weighted to one side). Not only completely weighted to one side, but consisting in its vast majority of civilians. > There's also the question of how many large conflicts were prevented since the time the creation of atomic weapons because it was seen as too costly, or one side was vastly superior because of them. There has been no "war to end all wars", in spite of hopeful predictions. We haven't had WW3, but "one side being vastly superior" has not prevented the US from being engaged near constantly in various wars since after WW2. It is indeed a very complex topic, but questioning the ethics of those involved in the development of atomic weapons, especially given all we know about the way it was done, is a completely reasonable stance.

mixmastamyk 9y ago

I grew up next to the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory just north west of Los Angeles. Due to a cover up, no one really knew they built a nuclear reactor there in a warehouse-type building with no containment, that of course had a meltdown and explosion a year or two later. All of my parent's generation from the area died by roughly 60 years old of cancer. It still boggles my mind that anyone would be so reckless whenever I think about it. Never underestimate the government's (and associated corp's) capacity for pure evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

Spooky23 9y ago
Be careful, that sounds like a critique of nuclear energy, which tends to attract a strong reaction. Typical argument is that more people died installing solar cells than in that type of incident.
FrozenVoid 9y ago
>Never underestimate the government's (and associated corp's) capacity for pure evil. Except when the topic is water fluoridation, vaccines or genetically modified crops, then its all right and above criticism.
- echelon 9y ago
  The things you named are safe and yield quantifiable benefits. Ionizing radiation, on the other hand, is entirely deleterious.
  - tomsmeding 9y ago
    Relatively safe; we still don't know for sure whether there are no negative consequences. But definitely in another league than ionizing radiation.
    - delazeur 9y ago
      > we still don't know for sure whether there are no negative consequences That is a carefully-worded statement that will always be true about everything.

samstave 9y ago

My grandfather was a nuclear eng for GE his entire career and was one of the engineers who helped run hanford... He died of severe esophageal cancer in the late 90's and they were a part of a class action of nukes against GE, which they won through settlement - but GE would not admit that the cancers were caused by them being nukes at places such as Hanford...

Spooky23 9y ago
GE has a history of all sorts of stuff like that. In addition to dumping PCBs all over, they "donated" contaminated waste oil to counties and towns around their Schenectady and Washington County, NY plants. The counties in turn used the oil to tar rural roads (basically dump oil on the road and cover with gravel). The result are probable clusters of lung and kidney cancers among residents along the roads.

JKCalhoun 9y ago

My wife comments from time to time on how all her uncles in Nebraska died of cancer. I have since found out that fallout from the Nevada tests fell as far away as Nebraska. So, who knows....

mirimir 9y ago
Stuff punched into the stratosphere, hit the jet stream, and then came down where storms went high enough. So it wasn't simple downwind dilution. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/8637173_fig2_Fig-2-Estimated-137-Cs-deposition-density-Bq-m-A-2-from-NTS-fallout-across-the https://www.researchgate.net/figure/8637173_fig2_Fig-2-Estim... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8637173_The_geographic_distribution_of_radionuclide_deposition_across_the_continental_US_from_atmospheric_nuclear_testing https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8637173_The_geograp...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mirimir 9y ago

I vaguely recall reading that health physics experts recommended siting the US nuclear weapon test range in North Carolina.[0] Perhaps on or near Hatteras Island. Because "much of the fallout would come down over the ocean".[0] But on the other hand, "fallout would have contaminated the fishing resources off the coast" and it "would have allowed Russian/Cuban ships to monitor the tests and collect samples".[0] And given what we know now about stratospheric injection, there would likely have been hotspots in Europe. 0) https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/us-east-coast-test-site.906922/ https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/us-east-coast-test-sit...

nylonstrung 9y ago
From what I read about it the Nevada Test Site placement was probably most heavily informed by its proximity to Los Alamos and the logistical advantages that would confer rather than any safety concerns.

agumonkey 9y ago

Impressive how our great countries can be so shitty when nation takes precedence over citizen.