I was one of the Baby Boomers who lived through periodic catastrophe drills where the alarm bell ricocheted through a cinder block schoolhouse, and a deep, authoritarian voice boomed through a loudspeaker. “This is an attack. I repeat, this is an attack. Get under your desk immediately.” As ludicrous as it may seem in today’s age, the truth back then propaganda whitewashed the effect of radiation saying the government didn’t fully comprehend the lethal effects. Oh, really, I guess the studies on victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t count. The military deliberately put our soldiers in trenches at the Test Site in Nevada a few miles from ground zero and black and white photos are still available which confirm this incredible travesty. The government also followed cloud trails from atomic bomb blasts across the United States, documenting the amount of radiation which spread across the entire country.
Down Winders Win Lawsuit Against The Government
Radiation caused cancers were proven by the people living in St. George, Utah who became known as “Down Winders”. But it took an unprecedented legal battle to force compensation from the government for those affected because no one was ever warned of the dangers of radiation. AtomCentral.com has amassed a historical archive of still images and film footage to document the progression of a weapon of mass destruction. I’ve included several links to film footage taken between 1946 and 1955 because a picture is worth a thousand rants.
Testing Destruction at Frenchman’s Flat
The Teapot Dome video is only 03:31 long, but it shows the village of houses constructed from different building materials to test how each would hold up under an atomic bomb shock wave. Houses and mannequins simulating people were disintegrated in seconds. These images may be familiar because film footage of the shock wave was devastating and has been used in hundreds of documentaries.
Memories Which Can Never Be Erased
It occurred to me there are not a vast number of people still alive who dived under school desks when the ominous voice warned us of our fate if we did not seek shelter under desks. While younger generations are certainly aware nuclear holocausts can happen, like Chernobyl and Fukushima, they didn’t grow up with pictures of radiation burn victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I asked my Gen-X son if he remembered seeing pictures of Hiroshima burn victims and what effect those images had on him. He responded these burn victims didn’t upset him any more than pictures of the fire-bombing victims in Dresden, Germany. Both were equally horrific to him. My brother then offered the difference between Dresden and Hiroshima was radiation. Radioactive fallout killed Japanese who were miles away from Ground Zero and the land was ruined for decades because radioactive half-life can exist for centuries.
Black and white images of people disfigured by horrific burns or the shadow of a man whose ashes were fused into the concrete steps where he fell as a 6,000-degree bomb flash incinerated him were indelibly impressed into my memory. Recently, government film footage was declassified and converted to HD. Links are attached. By today’s standards it’s grainy but the footage is original.
It’s Personal
I was a child of the Cold War and absorbed the fear imprinted on a young and impressionable mind. Then I moved to Las Vegas about the time atomic bombs at the Test Site were being detonated. I lived in a two-story house and remember the house shaking and swaying as the 928 underground bombs exploded at the Test Site 90 miles from where I lived.
Because I spent most of my adult life in Nevada, when an editor at Avon Books asked me to write a mystery because that was the most popular genre for his publishing house, it wasn’t a far stretch to incorporate Area 51, the Nevada Test Site, and the travesty of Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Site. As enormous amounts of information became available on the Internet about these formerly “forbidden” subjects, I soon realized the situations woven into Glitter were more realistic than I realized while crafting the story. It is fiction, but many of the characters were drawn from real life. Friends will recognize personalities although names have been changed to protect me!
Photo Credit: National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office – This image is available from the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office Photo Library under ID 787. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21016034
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