[The following recounts an instance where the US government tested the effects of radiation from nuclear weaponry on their own soldiers.]
In one of the tests in 1953, U.S. soldiers were placed near the explosion to test how well they could function after a blast. Sergeant Reason Warehime was one of fifty soldiers who were in a trench two miles from ground zero. They wore no protective gear. “The first thing I saw,” he later reported, “was a real bright light like a flashbulb going off in my face, but it stayed on. It was so bright that even with sunglasses on, my hands over my eyes, and my eyes closed, I could actually see the bones in my hands. I felt as if someone was hugging me really tight, and my whole body was being compressed. All of a sudden, I heard an awful noise and felt an intensely hot wind blowing and the ground rocking like an earthquake. The dust was so thick I could not see the man right next to me. The air was so hot that it was difficult to breathe…. Since the fireball was directly over our heads, there is no doubt in my mind that we were in the ‘stem’ of the mushroom cloud.”
A voice over a loudspeaker ordered them to advance toward ground zero. The sandbags along the top of their trench were on fire. On reaching a bunker that was just over a mile from ground zero, they found eight men. “Those guys were sick as dogs and heaving their guts out,” he said. Soon they began finding spots where the sand had melted into glass. After reaching the crater, they turned back and eventually were picked up by two radiation specialists in full protective gear. On the way back, Warehime and some of his companions started throwing up. A few months later, all of his hair fell out, his teeth began to rot, and he was diagnosed as sterile. Eventually, he developed cataracts, lung cancer, his bones became brittle, and he had to use crutches to get around. Even though radiation is known to cause these things, in the 1980s, the Veterans Administration insisted his problems weren’t caused by this bomb and denied disability to him and many others like him.
An estimated 250,000 military personnel were exposed to radiation in experiments between 1946 and the 1970s. Many additional civilians were also used as guinea pigs in radiation tests. Very few have ever received any compensation for or assistance with the permanent damage caused to them.
Warehime was exposed to a forty-three-kiloton (not megaton) bomb. It turned out to be almost twice as powerful as the physicists had calculated it would be and was about twice as powerful as those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its radiation cloud spread across the nation from Nevada, fogging undeveloped film as far away as New Jersey.
Source:
Stephens, John Richard. “Official Documents.” Weird History 101: Tales of Intrigue, Mayhem, and Outrageous Behavior. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006. 45. Print.
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