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I have been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Both cities were devastated in 1945 by the new Atomic Bomb, and over a quarter million people killed, more than half of them instantly. I was born in 1962, at the height of The Cold War, which lasted from 1946 until the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
I’ve always been fascinated by this destructive power, atomic bombs; nuclear weapons; hydrogen bombs, and have spent much of my life learning about the development and planned use of these weapons. The Cold War, our rivalry with the Soviet Union, was THE major ongoing event of my life. From 1943 until 1991, the United States spent, in 1991 dollars, well over Five Trillion dollars on nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them anywhere in the world. At one time, in the 1960’s, over 60,000 nuclear weapons existed, more than half of them held by the United States of America, holding the citizens of the Soviet Union, and of the world, hostage, potential victims of a nuclear war, the war to end all wars, the war that would have likely killed most of the people on the planet.
The US, immediately sent film crews to the devastated cities to document the damage done to both the cities and the people, and over 90,000 feet of full color film was shot in these two cities. Upon it’s return to the United States, the film was classified "Top Secret" and it’s existence was erased, and never shown to the people of the US or to the world, film documenting in full color, the destruction and effects of the atomic bombs on cities and on people.
The US conducted over 1,200 tests of nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1991, 928 here, in the US, most of them in the Nevada Test Site, but also in New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, and Mississippi. Further nuclear testing was carried out in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, at high altitudes over both, and in space. Much of the previously secret filming of these tests is available on YouTube, now, but it was once much harder to find information on nuclear testing and on the devices and their development.
I put a lot of effort into learning as much as I could about nuclear weapons, in the US and by visiting the only places they were used in war, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, in Japan. I have been, for more than half my life, an Atomic Tourist.
This YouTube video is part of the footage shot in 1945 by the US and suppressed for decades:
Stay tuned please. I have more to tell of my tourism and what I have learned.
American atomic test sites
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“Fracking” or breaking shale rock to release natural gas is not new. The US detonated nuclear weapons in Colorado and New Mexico in the 60s expressly to release gas, in tandem with energy companies, to exploit large deposits of natural gas, locked in rock. The results were radioactive gas that could not be sold to consumers, and this means of releasing that captive gas was not tried again. We should be grateful, and appalled that nuclear cowboys tried so hard to use nuclear weapons for Peaceful Purposes. They blew things up elsewhere to see what happens, like boys stuffing firecrackers down lizards mouths. Now North Korea is trying to “join the club” of Nuclear Powers – the US, Russia/the USSR, Great Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan. South Africa Iraq, and Iran have tried to join the club, and Israel will not confirm or deny having these weapons, but is widely believed to have several hundred of them. Libya was trying hard to develop these weapons, but surrendered all of their data and developments to the US in 2002. Nuclear annihilation is no longer the fear that it was, but thousands of these weapons still exist.
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The video showed up but alas my connetion is not well enough tonight that I can watch it. I will be back though. I’d like to see it. There is so much that is being kept from us. I’m sure “they” think it’s for our own good and maybe some of it is but really I think there are a lot of things we should see.
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I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War and of Hiroshima. The Cuban Crisis chilled us to the bone, at a very impressionable age. We saw the red bursts in the sky one night when a US test in the Pacific lit up the Van Allen radiation belt. (?1963? 62?) We didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe aliens landing on earth. It made most of us very anti-nuclear.
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