Original subtitles

The lethal aspect of this story

Downloaded from YTS.MX

is one that people don't want to talk about,

They-- they ju-- they just do not want to talk about.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

[eerie wind blowing]

[keyboard clacking]

[insects chirping]

[insects buzz]

-[street din] -[dog barks]

-[bell tolls] -[crickets chirp]

[announcer] Put on your goggles.

Observers without goggles

must face away from the blast.

H minus ten seconds.

Nine, eight...

seven, Six,

five, four, three,

two, one,

zero!

[explosion rumbles]

[crackling]

[indistinct chatter on radio]

[woman] [indistinct] 46.

-[man on radio] 710-4. -[man on radio] [indistinct]

[eerie synth music plays]

[Claudia Peterson] When the declassified information

came out,

when they were finding an area,

they chose to test that because...

they felt like they already owned the land.

They didn't, it was Shoshone land.

They weren't gonna have to pay for it.

They were told to do it back East, would be better,

'cause it would go over the ocean,

it wouldn't contaminate the people downwind.

But they decided it was cheaper

to be in Nevada,

and it was a low-use segment

of the population they would be exposing.

Downwind.

[orchestral music plays]

[electronic music plays]

[somber orchestral music plays]

[film reel crackling]

A short time ago,

an American airplane dropped one bomb

on Hiroshima

and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

That bomb has more power

than 20,000 tons of TNT.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor.

They have been repaid manyfold.

And the end is not yet.

With this bomb, we have now added

a new and revolutionary increase

in destruction,

to supplement the growing power

of our armed forces.

In their present form,

these bombs are now in production.

And even more powerful bombs are in development.

It is an atomic bomb.

It is a harnessing

of the basic power of the universe.

The force from which the sun draws his power

has been loosed against those

who've brought war to the Far East.

[narrator] It is tempting to believe

the buck stopped there.

However, the awe-striking horrors

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

though arguably may have ended one war,

they started another.

The Cold War.

[solemn orchestral music plays]

[military reel narrator] This is the valley

where the giant mushrooms grow.

More atomic bombs have been exploded

on these 200 square miles of desert

than on any other spot on the globe.

[narrator] On January 27th, 1951,

the United States air-dropped the first nuclear device

-on the Nevada test site. -[explosion booms]

It was codenamed "Able."

Apparently, it was determined

that the detonation of this one kiloton device,

and the 927 tests conducted thereafter...

would be perfectly safe on American soil.

[ominous music plays]

My name is lan Zabarte,

I am Principal Man of the Western Bands

of the Shoshone Nation of Indians.

I'm also secretary

of the Native Community Action Council.

Party with standing

in the Atomic Safety Licensing Board

of the proposed

Yucca Mountain High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository,

docket 63-001.

My family, personally, um...

my grandfather, my uncle,

uh, other first cousins...

have died of cancer and today are still dying

of various forms of cancer,

fro-- and-- and other illnesses

known to be plausible from exposure to radiation.

My grandfather, um,

he had an immune deficiency,

and his skin became hard and fell off.

That is a type of illness

that is potentially related to exposure to radiation,

and ultimately he died from a heart attack

a month after his skin fell off,

but that produced stress on his body,

which, I believe, uh, led to his heart attack.

A lot of our activities were outside.

And, uh, my uncles and aunts

and, uh, other family members played in the fallout.

I was luckily-- lucky enough not to be exposed,

as far as I am aware.

That's...

-[eerie music plays] -[Geiger counter crackles]

[Darlene Graham] When we were little kids,

livin' on the reservation in Duckwater, Nevada,

we used to hear this great big boom,

and then we'd run out,

and we could see this cloud comin' up.

They call it a mushroom.

We-- we would see that come up, and we didn't know what it was.

[announcer] Three, two, one,

-zero. -[explosion rumbles]

Over time, uh, it was later on

that when we were told, uh,

that they were doing the testing there, and, uh,

there was radiation spreading out across the--

Yeah, Nevada and across the States,

and we found out that, uh,

it caused cancer and leukemia.

The cancer was my youngest brother.

We had noticed that when he was growing up,

he was having sore throats all the time,

and the doctor was giving him antibiotics.

And I remember,

we would see the--

The dust come up,

like a, you-- single comb,

and then it spread out like a mushroom.

That's why they call it a mushroom.

Once we've seen the-- the mushroom,

we went back in the house.

My brother, Philip Graham,

later on, was diagnosed with cancer of the throat.

Even if he went to the doctor's in Phoenix, Las Vegas,

they did not diagnose him with cancer at that time.

No one ever warned us about the testing

and what it would cause.

Our ancestors used to live...

wi-- uh, off the land.

And we still do, at times.

And that was being taken away,

and because of-- we can't even go on to the test site.

If we do, we get arrested.

And it's destroying our medicine,

it's destroying our animals,

destroying our plants.

It's destroying everything.

We know it's the cancer from the radiation.

'Cause it's called downwind.

We're downwinders.

"Cause that's where the radiation go,

down towards us.

Wherever we're livin'.

And it's like a, um...

cross-- all across the United States,

from the test site it goes like this

all the way across the United States

and not only affects people in Duckwater.

All the areas.

[eerie music plays]

[explosion booms]

[narrator] The path of radioactive fallout

from each blast

depended on predicted wind

and weather patterns.

[Patrick Wayne] My father was under contract for,

and made two pictures for Howard Hughes and RKO.

Jet Pilot and The Conqueror.

If my dad had to make a choice, he never would have--

He never would have played Genghis Khan,

because this is like-- I mean, I don't know.

I do remember that, uh, you know,

we're down here in St. George,

it was towards the end of summer, I think.

We had no idea that the testing was going on.

That was a big hush-hush secret.

But what we did know, was at that time,

uranium was, like, the big thing.

Uranium mining was a big thing,

everybody was gonna make a fortune,

um, on this uranium mining.

-Everybody had Geiger counters. -[Geiger counter clicking]

Well, they turned these Geiger counters,

it didn't matter where you were,

I mean, these things were goin' [imitates Geiger counter].

We thought, you know, we're gonna discover uranium,

it's right here, we're gonna all be,

you know, kajillionaires.

It turned out that it was something much more sinister,

-as we-- we know now. -[explosion booms]

Uh, this, uh, you know, the fallout from the--

From the testing up north was drifting down

to, um, to this area.

Wha-- what?-- what's the results of all this stuff?

Well...

I mean, uh, when you look at the cast and crew

on the film The Conquerors, it's, uh,

just a whacked-out number of people,

a percentage of people, who passed away,

died from cancer.

Uh, and it's just so much higher

than the typical demographic

that, uh, you know, by-- skewed by so many.

You know, if it's 60%, it maybe should be 14%.

I mean, uh, one of the reasons could have been

that they were exposed to this stuff on, uh,

on The Conqueror.

Um, RKO Studios, I don't know what they call it now,

in, um, in Los Angeles, um,

they had taken a bunch of the soil

back to the studio, uh,

for interiors, uh, that they shot at their studio.

And there was still a big pile of this red dirt

on the back lot at, uh, the RKO lot.

And we went back there in the-- I guess this was--

I think it was in the--

Still, the late '90s, somethin' like that.

And we went over with a Geiger counter,

and this thing was still, like, radioactive.

I mean, it has a half-year--

Half-life of 10,000 years or something.

It's not going anywhere.

So, that was a pretty good indication

of what they were going through, and living with, and eating.

Certainly, you know, it gets in the food,

it gets in the water, gets in the food chain,

it gets in the--

The feed that the cattle were chewing, and bu-- yeah,

so, I mean, it's pervasive-- pervasive stuff.

[horses neighing]

-[men shouting indistinctly] -[epic music plays]

[Mark Sennet] I was on assignment

in St. George, Utah

for People magazine.

We were doing a story

on this woman called Irma Thomas.

And Irma was kind of the activist,

you know, in St. George,

because she was so alarmed

and trying to get St. George alarmed

about the tremendous leukemia rate.

And she turned to me, and she said,

"You know, they've made about 40 movies out here,

in Snow Canyon, and, uh,

you know, John Wayne made a--

This movie called The Conqueror."

[Temuijin] You do well, Kumlek.

For while I have fingers to grasp a sword

and eyes to see,

your treacherous head is not safe on your shoulders.

Nor your daughter in her bed.

[epic music fades]

I immediately picked up the phone,

and I called Michael in LA.

And I said, "Michael, please...

tell me this story about--

About your father doing this movie, The Conqueror,

because there is so much r-- radiation up here

from all the atomic blasts that were above ground,

um, probably affected, you know,

uh, the work on the set."

Michael and I had to decide,

how could we crack this story?

You know, because this is so important,

because you had 220 people

that left Los Angeles.

And-- and we counted, on my calculations

and my partner, Karen Jackovich,

out of 220 people, if our estimates are correct,

110 people died of cancer.

It just seems to me quite a coincidence that--

That a whole group of people,

uh, passed away.

And by the way, yeah,

there were people that smoked on this set.

People smoked then. That's what everybody did.

I don't think the people on the crew,

I don't know what the numbers are,

but I don't know if they all happened to die

from lung cancer, I don't think so.

My father ended up dying from stomach cancer...

some 15 years after he had lung cancer.

[Mark] As the headlines are coming in,

"Did America Kill John Wayne?",

um, we felt,

at the end of this whole purpose of putting this piece together,

was to shine a light on--

On the nuclear problem.

110 people died of cancer.

From below the line, you know, grips, electric,

you know, to the main stars.

And-- and the way

that they all died was different,

but they all seemed to contract cancer

within the first ten to 15 years.

[eerie music plays]

[narrator] Radiation permeates everything.

It gets there, it stays there.

Wind, earth and water.

The radiation is in the water,

it is, uh, going to be transported.

The estimates are between 200 foot per year

and 200,000 foot per year travel time.

If that's the case, then it's already off site,

and it's heading towards Beatty, and, uh,

it'll get into the Amargosa River,

and it'll be transported even faster

towards our community.

That's why we need a safe place for my people.

I'm descended from Chief Kawich.

Kawich Valley, Kawich Peak, Kawich Mountain.

And this is the headwaters

of the Amargosa River.

Goes down through Beatty,

comes all the way down to Shoshone and Tecopa,

where we're at, to China Ranch.

And then it makes a turn down into Death Valley...

to our community, at Furnace Creek.

So, we have the radiation

from weapons testing, underground,

at Paiute Mesa, into the river.

The potential for Yucca Mountain

to release radiation into the river.

But that water's the most important thing

in the desert.

[light music plays]

♪ [Shoshone lyrics] ♪

♪ [Shoshone lyrics] ♪

♪ [Shoshone lyrics] ♪

♪ [Shoshone lyrics] ♪

♪ [Shoshone lyrics] ♪

♪ [Shoshone lyrics] ♪

I feel that it is disgustingly shameful

that the scientists and engineers

come into my country,

come into my people's land,

my family's land,

they collect my family's things.

The security there shoot

at thousands-of-year-old petroglyphs

and destroy my family's things,

and they wanna tell me all about it.

The-- the anthropologists, these researchers,

they don't know what they're trying to protect.

Engineers and scientists, they wanna do science.

They wanna build things.

They're not trying to protect my interests,

They're not trying to follow the law.

They're not trying to follow the law.

They're there in secret, and they do what they want.

It's disgustingly shameful.

So, our water flows under the road here.

There's very important life here.

At night, you can hear the frogs.

Hear 'em?

[frogs croaking]

So, these frogs are important.

They're, um, indicators of environmental quality.

And so is the little-- the little worm.

These are very, uh, special animals,

and our people took the time, you know,

to understand and commune with these things

and use them out of respect and reverence.

We know what we're trying to protect.

We're trying to protect this water

and all the life that comes from it.

And honestly, that's all of us.

We are water. I am water.

And we need other people to understand that.

Where are they-- where are they gonna get

their water from in the future?

How are they going to protect themselves

without clean water?

We're running into that right now.

Flint, Michigan.

You know, f-- is-- is a good example.

You have to have pure water

otherwise, uh-- uh, you're not going to survive.

[ominous music plays]

[Claudia] Growing up in, um, Cedar City was fabulous.

I had an idyllic childhood.

We lived on a little-- it was a little farm.

My mother was an RN,

and my dad worked for the State Road,

and we had a big--

My mother had a great big garden,

and we had some farm animals,

and I spent all my days outside, playing.

I do remember coming with, uh, Geiger counters.

I remember lighting one up, one time,

and asking the question, why would I light--

Why did I light up?

I was excited, I thought it was pretty exciting

that I lit up the Geiger counter.

And the guy told me

it was 'cause I'd had a dental X-ray.

[solemn music plays]

My sister's class,

they passed out big pills.

And I later learned

that it was done randomly,

and that was potassium iodine pills.

But they were passing them out

after a test,

instead of before,

and it was supposed to inhibit the, uh,

absorption of the-- the radiation.

[Geiger counter clicking]

[narrator] In January 1955,

the United States Atomic Energy Commission

released a report

that assured the public that, quote,

"Radiation is nothing new.

Since the beginning of time,

mankind has been bombarded by radiation

from outer space

and from the ground beneath him."

[film reel narrator] Radium turned out to be

a mysterious source of energy.

But this remarkable element would go on radiating

like an endlessly flowing spring.

This was against all laws of science

known at that time.

How could this tiny mass contain so much energy?

[show narrator] Radiation from any source

can attack the thyroid, the skin,

the lungs, the spleen,

the liver, the kidneys,

the bone, the muscle,

the reproductive organs.

Its effects: cancers, genetic mutations.

[ominous orchestral music plays]

[Mary Dickson] People are still getting sick.

Their cancers are coming back.

It's not like you just have cancer,

and it goes away.

You-- no, you're dealing with it the rest of your life,

and it's not just the physical, either.

It's-- it-- it's a huge emotional problem,

like, every new lump you feel.

Every time you get sick.

Every ache, every pain, you think,

"Oh, my God, it's come back."

And just how it affects your family

and the people who love you, um...

it's so, so hard to live with that.

And it's-- you know, the more work I did on this,

the more people come to me with their stories.

I hear these stories that just kill me.

I was, um, on my way to work one day,

and I get a call.

And the woman is telling me that--

That she lost three children to leukemia as babies,

during atmospheric testing,

and now her surviving adult children have cancer.

I have wondered, all these years,

why more people don't know.

I mean, there are even people in my own state

and in southern Utah who don't really know much.

I don't think it ever was in history books.

They never learned it. I mean, how do you learn it?

And-- and there have been newspaper articles, but...

how-- how do you learn it?

Unless you're taught it. And it's not taught.

It's just simply not part of our recorded history.

You know, my sister and I were only 13 months apart,

and I think she'd say, "Keep going,"

and sometimes, like, I invoke all of them,

these people I've lost.

It's like, "Preston, Michelle, Anne, just help me.

Help me get through this

because it's hard to carry that baton."

It's like, sometimes I just need to say...

"Okay, I need help. I've gotta have help doing this.

I can't do it all."

[solemn piano music plays]

[announcer] If you were driving from Los Angeles

to Salt Lake City, on US Highway 91,

you would pass through St. George, Utah.

As this thriving community went about its business,

youngsters on their way to school,

housewives starting on the chores of the day.

[news anchor] Ladies and gentlemen,

we interrupt this program to bring you important news.

Word has just been received

from the Atomic Energy Commission

that due to a change in wind direction,

the residue from this morning's atomic detonation

is drifting in the direction of St. George.

It is suggested that everyone remain indoors

for one hour or until further notice.

There is no danger.

[ominous music plays]

[Claudia] My life was great.

I went to college and met my husband in college.

I had three beautiful children.

When our youngest daughter was three...

even all these years later,

it hurts to even talk about it.

She was diagnosed with neuroblastoma.

I took her to, like, four or five doctors here,

and they just kept saying, "Nothing's wrong with her,

she's just constipated.”

But I had-- I drove her to Primary Children's

in the middle of the night and said,

"Something's wrong with my child,

and nobody's listening."

A-- and they said, "Well, we'll check her out and see."

And she had a tumor

the size of an orange

in her abdomen.

And it was Stage V. Bone and bone marrow.

A hematologist came in and said,

"Well, she's got a 5% chance she'll live two years."

And I said, "Okay!

We can-- we can do that, we'll--"

And her hematologist had been to the test site...

and protested the test site.

Her-- 'cause I asked if it could be fallout-related,

what I passed on to her,

and her oncologist said, "You could never prove it."

I said, "I don't need to prove it.

I know it is."

[solemn music plays]

Then she had a nine-hour surgery.

She came through that,

and they were still doing chemotherapy,

but they had to just keep cuttin' it back and back,

'cause she couldn't tolerate it,

and finally, they took her off of it,

and she was doing fabulous.

She started school,

and her teacher called me, like...

the second day and said, "She's too tired to walk home."

And it was just down the hill.

I said, "I'll come get her."

And I went and got her, and she had a bloody nose,

and I'm going, "What's going on?"

And she-- "I don't know, I'm just really tired, Mom."

And this just wasn't her.

I had taken my sister,

drug my sister to Salt Lake

when she was nine months pregnant.

She's kept sa yin' she's fine, she's fine.

I said, "You're not fine. Something is wrong."

Got her into an oncologist.

She had brain, lung, liver.

It was everywhere,

and she was nine months pregnant.

The day Bethany was diagnosed with the...

leukemia, I drove home with Bethany,

I said, "Well, I've got to go home,

my sister's not doing well."

I got home, about two in the morning,

the hospital called and said,

"Your sister's thrown a clot to her lung, or some--"

I crawled on the bed with my sister,

and I-- she's on a vent, and I said,

"You've gotta come get Bethany when it's time for her to go

because I can't let her go.

I can't let her go without somebody."

So-- and I know she heard me, but...

we took my sister off life support

the next morning, and...

did her funeral, and then...

we went back to Salt Lake, and...

we were there for a month, and Bethany died a month later.

[solemn orchestral music plays]

♪

[narrator] On October 1st, 1997,

then-senator Tom Harkin, from Iowa,

addressed a congressional hearing

on radioactive fallout

and asked, quote, "Why did the government,

when they had all the information

about hot spots and fallout,

why did they not warn the people of this country

about the dangers inherent in radioactive fallout?"

Unquote.

[Geiger counter clicking]

♪

[Brian Moench] There is no question that, uh,

the United States government...

uh, scheduled and manipulated

the nuclear testing era in such a way

as to not expose

the people in Southern California any more

than absolutely necessary, but...

uh, would exchange their exposure

for exposure of people in Southern Utah.

Now, I suppose you-- if-- if you are convinced

that we're gonna expose the population to this,

and it's an absolute imperative

that it makes some sense to expose

a fewer number of people.

But you can't convince anybody in the state of Utah

that we weren't viewed, as a state,

as more expendable than the people in California.

I don't know if that was part

of the conscious deliberations,

on the part of people who made that decision...

but, um...

if-- if you're gonna say, "Well,

let's expose 10,000 people

and not expose 100,000 people,”

well, maybe, that makes sense.

But obviously, the 10,000 people that you're going to expose...

are never going to view that as anything other than

their lives were made expendable.

[eerie music plays]

[film reel narrator] We in the military biomedical group

begin the task of readying our test animals.

These are the standard animals we work with daily

in our laboratories.

Knowing and working with them, we find that in many ways,

they are affected very much like humans.

-[announcer] One, zero! -[explosion rumbles]

[film reel narrator] Early in the Plumbbob Operation,

135 pigs, in aluminum containers

for protection against blast and thermal,

were exposed to the Franklin shot

to determine the effects of combined neutron

and gamma radiation and straight gamma.

The mortality rates, nearly 100%,

can be applied to man.

Outside the precursor, those animals in the open,

which escaped total missile injury,

survived temporarily,

until the massive radiation they received

took its fatal toll.

Flying glass fragments

did not significantly influence overall mortality.

[narrator] Downwinders were, and remain, expendable.

Unfortunately for the humans

who lived downwind from the Nevada test site,

they were no more aware of being lab rats

than the rats were.

[ominous music plays]

[Darwin Morgan] The world was in a different

political situation back then,

with the Cold War that was going on.

So, I-- whatever the subject is,

it's very easy

to sit and armchair quarterback the view from today,

to how we think

they should have done it back then.

O

They were faced with the situation

that they were in at that day with the knowledge

and the instruments and the capabilities

that they had at that time.

So, yes, it's easy,

very easy to look back and criticize

the decisions that were made,

the public safety.

Would we have done it that way today?

No.

Would we have been able to have done it at all,

in today's climate?

Probably not.

But again, it was a different time,

different political situation.

[film reel narrator] 640 square miles

of desert and mountains.

65 miles northwest from Las Vegas,

set in some of the loneliest acres

the world has ever seen.

These men are here for a vital purpose.

Since we have no atomic monopoly,

we must continue to increase our knowledge

of atomic weapons

to guarantee maximum military atomic spring.

But naturally, the folks in St. George,

as they look upon their silent city,

wonder why weapons are tested inside the United States,

instead of the far Pacific area.

The reason that they chose this site

goes all the way back to the atmospheric testing

in the Pacific Ocean.

Um, the scientists were getting concerned

about the safety of going out to the Paci-- Pacific.

Um, the security alone

was starting to begin-- become horrendous,

because they were having all of these boats

of "fishing trawlers"

that were coming out and spying on what was going on,

trying to learn what it was

that the United States was doing.

But safety was also a primary issue.

So the President authorized a top-secret program,

Project Nutmeg,

to look at and find,

on the continental United States,

a location where they could do

the lower yield atmospheric tests.

So they looked here, at the Nevada Proving Grounds,

which was the initial name of it,

where they carved away a piece

of the Nevada Bombing and Gunnery Range,

as it was called back then.

They looked at a Camp Lejeune,

what is now Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Dugway Proving Ground and White Sands Missile Range.

But they chose here,

uh, very remote location at the time.

You gotta remember, the population center

was much smaller than it is now,

40,000 people, 45,000 people.

Very remote, very hard to get to,

a very enclosed valley that they could control,

security.

And so they picked this location.

The President signed the paperwork

on December 18th, 1950.

And 45 calendar days later,

they dropped the first bomb on the United States.

-[announcer] Two! -[explosion rumbles]

♪

[film reel narrator] The answer is,

we need both testing areas.

In the vast, isolated reaches of the Mid-Pacific,

we test weapons of tremendous strength.

Only smaller bombs are tested inside the United States.

These smaller devices,

just as important to America's weapons strength

as the larger ones,

could not be tested so quickly

if they had to be taken to the Pacific Proving Ground,

about 5,000 miles from our western coast.

An operation like this takes time.

Months and months of time.

While atomic progress waits.

[Keith Rogers] Testing underground continued

until, I think it was September 23rd, 1992.

There were others that were lined up to go off.

Ice Cap was ready and, uh,

and then after the-- that last test, uh,

we suspended nuclear testing altogether.

♪

Edward Teller was, you talk about regret, he--

He didn't like to be known as the Father of Hydrogen Bomb.

He'd like to be known as the physicist

who helped stop the war,

and he saw things that way, uh, you know.

When I asked him, where we were as far as being,

you know, progressing as to whatever level,

he stopped the interview one time,

"cause, you know, Teller used to--

He always talked in "If... then..."

He had those big, bushy eyebrows, you know.

And he'd go, "If... then..." you know?

And-- and you would get this whole--

He would analyze it for you and give you the answer,

you know, from the mind of a physicist.

And all of a sudden,

he just got in the middle of his, "If... then..."

And he stopped.

And he goes, "I don't want to go any further in the interview."

And I don't know what it was, but it was like...

we all looked around and, you know,

I got a few quotes from Teller and got out of there.

[film reel narrator] Some of the tiny, radioactive particles

settle back to Earth, as the wind disperses the cloud.

These particles are called "fallout.”

The bulk of the particles soon fall out,

and the cloud disappears.

An invisible remnant of radioactive material

is lifted high, wide and far by the winds,

eventually settling to Earth.

But radioactive fallout,

beyond several miles from the test site,

has not been known to be serious.

It is not constituted an appreciable danger

to persons, animals, crops, property, or industry.

[Keith] But this was the land--

Was the homeland of the Western Shoshone,

and the Western Shoshones...

didn't want nuclear testing on their land.

And what happened was, the-- the government,

for the need of national security,

essentially...

restricted their access to this land.

But their-- their heritage was still there.

So, |I-- In-- in the early 1990s, |--

I looked into this.

And I, uh, I got a hold of lan Zabarte,

and he said, "Well, you need to talk to my--

My great-uncle.

Teddy Shaw.

So, we got a photographer, and we drove up there,

and I ask him...

about nuclear testing

and how he felt about it.

And his stare

got as cold as the--

The snow on the windowsill outside that little frame house

he was living in.

And he looked at me, and he said,

"It made the land sick."

And, you know, he's right.

It did.

And, uh, you know,

it has affected those people.

[solemn piano music plays]

[air raid siren blares]

[radio crackling]

[narrator] Over the 41 years of testing in Nevada,

100 atomic bombs were detonated above ground,

from airplanes, towers, cannons

and even balloons.

828 bombs were conducted underground,

including "Boxcar,"

a 1.3 megaton blast

with an equivalent yield

of 65 Hiroshima bombs.

[ominous orchestral music plays]

When they were shooting tests back then,

the atmospheric tests,

they were looking for the cloud formation

to go in a particular or-- direction.

Back then, the population centers

were not as they are now,

so there was very, very low population

to the northeast of the site.

That's where they tended to make sure

that the clouds would go in those directions.

So EPA would go out into the communities

and let them know that on these days

we're gonna have a test.

They may not give the specific time,

and then there would be the EPA monitors out

in the community.

And if there was a prompt massive venting,

then the EPA was ready to start doing the evacuations

in those communities.

But they literally knew where every sheepherder was,

where every wood cutter was.

If there was hunting going on,

they knew where every hunter was.

So they knew where the population was,

where they could get them out if they needed to.

Each test had a name.

And the names of the tests had to be something

that was not gonna offend anybody,

non-religious, things like that.

And then the laboratories would submit those to DOE,

the DOE'd submit those

to the National Security Council,

it got approved, came back,

and so you'd see these nicknames on tests

that ranged from everything from, uh, horses, vegetables,

New Mexico counties, Texas towns.

[lan] Out of the 928 tests, here at the Nevada test site,

24 jointly with the United Kingdom,

they have a list of...

of names, and we have Zuni, Yuma, Erie, Seminole,

Flathead, Blackfoot, Kickapoo, Osage, Inca, Dakota,

Mohawk, Apache, Navajo, Tiwa, Huron.

They named their weapons tests after,

uh-- uh, Indian tribes, and that shows a lack of--

Of respect and dignity.

And we began our investigations

on the adverse health consequences

that my people were suffering,

looking at the period of weapons testing

here at the Nevada test site, '51 through '63.

But it's important--

Those were the above-ground weapons tests,

and it's important to understand that

even after that,

underground weapons testing

released radioactive fallout globally,

because every test, uh-- uh, vents.

[Darwin] If the weather was going to carry the cloud

above a certain radioactive limit--

Back then it was called 170 millirems--

They didn't do the test.

If it was going to stay within that range of 170 millirems,

if they had a prompt massive venting,

and the 170 millirem limit

was gonna be inside a certain area,

then they would go ahead and do the test.

♪

[narrator] Through nuclear testing,

the population of the United States

was exposed to nearly three times

the total radiation dose of the Chernobyl disaster.

♪

Somehow, fallout has,

uh, found its way into the environment, globally.

And, um, the perfect example

is right here at the Nevada test site where,

on the southwestern edge,

you have this mountain called Yucca Mountain,

and it straddles the southwest boundary

of the Nevada test site.

And it's this-- this long volcanic rock ridge

that-- that in Western Shoshone lore

is a snake.

And this was where the Department of Energy

wanted to try to see if it was suitable

for a repository to store nuclear waste.

The highest, deadliest nuclear waste in the world

from-- from commercial nuclear reactors.

And the spent fuel rods

would be entombed in this mountain.

And it turns out, Yucca Mountain's

really not a good place to put nuclear waste,

because they found out,

through worldwide, global fallout...

that-- that nuclear remnants

from worldwide testing...

had gone from the top of Yucca Mountain

down to the exploratory tunnel level,

about 1,000 feet below the top of the mountain,

in less than-- well, roughly 50 years--

50, 60 years.

So, the point is...

fallout was so widespread

that-- that the scientists could track

the various nuclear bombs that they were detonating

by the signatures of their isotopes.

And that's how we know how far it traveled,

from specific tests.

[narrator] So what does the American government do

when it can't solve an actual problem?

It buys its way out.

♪

[Kevin Kamps] RECA is short

for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act,

and it's a federal law to compensate

segments of the population

who have suffered radioactive exposure.

Unfortunately, its scope is way too limited,

and it's not just cancer.

It's other diseases, it's genetic damage,

it's birth defects.

The amount of money being offered

to the survivors, or their-- their survivors,

the people who didn't survive, is way too small.

I mean, $50,000 doesn't buy much in the way of chemotherapy,

or other state-of-the-art medical care,

which is required to deal with the cancers

and other maladies that result from radioactive exposures,

radioactive fallout exposures, and in fact,

that's another problem with RECA,

is it only recognizes a certain number of cancers.

But the United States government almost never admits guilt,

and so they express it in different ways,

and they do it kicking and screaming.

I mean, it took many decades,

from the opening of the test site in 1951,

before RECA was even passed.

And like I said, there was a lot of people

who've been exposed to radioactive fallout

in certain states, including from the test site,

that have never been recognized under the RECA statute,

so it's a great uphill battle, and, uh...

it is an admission of guilt on a certain level.

I'm shocked that the government admitted to it,

because the liability's gonna-- could be enormous.

Uh...

there is no amount of money

that-- that would really replace, or...

someone in-- that suffers from this,

or even dies from it, but this is ridiculous.

$50,000 is-- is--

It's insulting.

Some people are always askin' me,

"Okay, what do we do next? What do we do?"

And I say, "Well, first of all,

we work to compensate those downwinders

who are still struggling to pay bills,

and who are still getting sick."

So there is

the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act,

that was always incredibly limited,

that finally got passed in 1990.

It's never gone far enough,

it just does a little circle around southern Utah

and northern Arizona, and southeast Nevada.

And that's why I think people still think

it only affected that area,

"cause that's the only area that got compensated.

[Mark Sennet] I think it's something that's so important

for-- for all the survivors,

and they deserve $50,000,

but that's not enough.

That doesn't even cover the--

The four or five other people that are in their family,

that contracted some sort of cancer from the nuclear blast.

So, the certain types of cancer that are radiation-related,

that RECA does pay out for, there's still, though,

no definitive way to say that it was caused by the radiation,

but there is that assumption that it's there.

So, it's a hot topic.

It-- it is a debate that goes on today,

and will go on for many years to come.

I can't be compensated.

None of those 54 neighbors can--

And their families can be compensated

because we lived beyond the-- that little boundary they drew,

as though a lead shield stopped it mid-state.

It doesn't stop it from going into other counties and states.

♪

We have a few politicians now, in the state of Utah,

that are representing us in Congress,

that have made public statements in the last few years,

that it's not only okay, but desirable

for us to resume nuclear testing.

Testing nuclear bombs

in the Nevada nuclear testing area.

I can't think of anything that disqualifies a person more

for public service than to--

Than to make a statement like that.

Knowing what that has done to public health

here in this state, and to other downwind states,

but the idea that we could dismiss all that,

that we could say, the amount of--

Of human suffering and death that we have inflicted

upon our own country, that we're going to resume that,

under some sort of auspices of national security,

is just absolutely unconscionable.

And I don't think there's any idea

that disqualifies a person more

from being a member of Congress

than the idea that we can resume that.

[Kevin] Downwinders are people who live downwind,

downstream, up the food chain, down the generations

from these radioactive exposures,

as for nuclear weapons testing fallout.

The United States government literally said,

in an internal document that eventually became public,

that cowboys, Indians, Mormons,

the people who live in Nevada and Utah,

are a low-use segment of the population.

That's a quote.

"A low-use segment of the population,”

which means sub-human.

We don't really care about them, they're not that important.

If they get hurt, big deal.

We've got some business to conduct,

that is, to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal,

so that we can be a global superpower.

And in fact, it gets even worse than that.

Not just a low-use segment of the population,

but in a document called Project 4.1, again,

US Atomic Energy Commission,

there were statements made in writing that po--

Certain populations,

like the Western Shoshone in Nevada,

the Marshall Islanders in the Pacific Ocean,

"are more like us than mice,"

therefore any data that we gather

from their radiological exposures,

will really teach us a lot,

because these people,

even though they're a low-use segment of the population,

"are more like us than mice."

So these are, in a sense,

these are genocidal, um, concepts.

These were experiments.

They were being experimented upon

like guinea pigs.

♪

[narrator] The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

is underfunded,

and is guided seemingly by the notion that radiation

contains itself neatly, within three states' borders.

[Brian] When people are exposed to radiation,

uh, the thing that's most intuitive,

uh, is genetic damage.

And genetic damage is what we call the break in--

Breaking of covalent bonds that hold DNA together.

When that happens, there, uh,

there is a whole cascade of diseases that can follow.

What is easiest for the public to understand,

and is most familiar with, is cancer.

But it isn't just limited to cancer.

The functioning, and proper functioning of genes,

and the-- the expression of genes,

is critical to every single healthy organ system function

that keeps a human being alive.

It's critical to the function of the heart,

the cardiovascular system, to the lungs,

to the endocrine system, to the Gl tract.

Your genes are responsible for your health.

So, if you're exposed to anything

that causes genetic damage,

or even changes the expression of genes,

such that we don't see the-- the breakage of covalent bonds,

but we see genes performing in ways that they shouldn't,

they're either turned on when they shouldn't be,

or they're turned off when they shouldn't be,

that affects virtually every kind of potential disease

a person can have.

Not to mention the psychological burden

of knowing that you have cancer.

Um, I've had cancer twice.

And I remember, uh, the weekend

when I looked at a computer screen...

that told me I had cancer.

I'll tell you, there's...

is no feeling in the world like that.

O

-[explosion booming] -[wind whooshing]

How many tests do you have to do,

to find out that they work,

and that stuff goes up in the air,

a-- and I've had people,

especially students, when I speak to class,

they say, "Well, why did they do so many tests?"

It's like, "You know, it's a really good question."

Because what did they find out on the 928th test

that they didn't know on the 12th

or tenth or 20th or 30th?

Um, and-- and to me, I always said,

"Well, it's boys with toys."

You've got this incredibly strong,

I would say, perilously dangerous

military-industrial complex,

and it's really hard to stop its-- its momentum.

It's really hard.

[narrator] The Atomic Energy Commission's report added,

quote, "Radiation is not new in our lives.

In this atomic age, we are living

on a more familiar basis with it.

It is important that we try to understand it,

accept it, and use it.

It is also important that we respect its powers,

so that we will be guided by knowledge,

and not be blinded by fear of the unknown."

Unquote.

O

[Brian] The United States government,

uh, has, through the Atomic Energy Commission,

created some real, uh, media products

that were pure propaganda.

And that film that they produced,

I think it was in 1957, was one of those.

Now a lot of people might say,

"Well, we didn't know all the harm

that nuclear radiation does to people back in 1957,"

but actually, that's not true.

The scientist who works--

Who worked on the Manhattan Project knew

before they ever dropped the bombs on Japan in 1945,

that nuclear radiation could be highly toxic,

could shorten people's lifes--

lifespans, and be a significant cause of cancer.

We knew that back then.

Twelve years later, for the United States government

to disseminate information

that blatantly dismissed all of that,

and send a message to the public,

"Oh, there's no reason to be concerned here.

This is all safe.

But we want you to go inside

when this radiation cloud comes over you,

and we're... [laughs]

...we're gonna tell children to-- to hide

underneath their desks as an exercise

in defending yourself from nuclear war,"

as if that would have done anything.

But somehow, this is all safe.

[film reel narrator] But radioactive fallout

beyond several miles from the test site

has not been known to be serious.

It is not constituted an appreciable danger

to persons, animals, crops, property, or industry.

It was absurd at the time. It was dishonest at the time.

It was propaganda even back then.

In retrospect, we can certainly identify it

even more so as propaganda,

but we knew it back then as well.

[film reel narrator] We must be ready

for a new danger, the atomic bomb.

First, you have to know what happens

when an atomic bomb explodes.

You'll know when it comes.

We hope it never comes, but we must get ready.

[explosion booming]

[Lewis Black] You know what they would do?

They would come to my elementary school, with-- with films.

To show me how to protect myself

from a nuclear fuck holocaust.

[audience laughter]

They would show this giant nuclear fuckin' bomb,

just blowing the shit out of everything.

Goats and monkeys flying everywhere.

[audience laughter]

The windows of the elementary school blown out,

the teacher banged up against the fuckin' blackboard.

[laughter, applause]

But...

there were the children...

[audience laughter]

...hiding safely under their desks.

[cheers, applause]

O

Yeah, I've always found it fascinating,

you know, that you would create something

that would destroy the world.

I mean, there's a really solid idea,

it's really solid, what we can get by.

We can put some money into that.

And then you let that-- you-- you know,

that genie out of the bottle.

It's the same thing we're dealin' with--

With climate, and stuff.

They're lookin' right at it, it is staring 'em in the face,

and they're denying it.

They're lookin' right at the nucle--

Nuclear weapons, you know?

We're still kinda, you know, and then--

And then they let that, uh, idiot Putin say,

"You know, I'm gonna-- I may do this."

What are you, nuts?

That's the person you want to get rid of,

SO you go get somebody with a blowdart and...

[blows] ...just behind his ear, and he's done.

But then, people say, "Well, you know,

the rest of the country would, you know,

get really ins-- there'd be another jackass who'd show up,

so what do you-- what do you do?"

Every two weeks, when I was nine,

my elementary school would have an air raid drill.

I guess to remind me, I can die at any minute!

[audience laughter]

So I go hide under my desk,

put my hands over my head, and look at my penis,

and say, "Goodbye, old fella."

[audience laughter]

And we'd just become friends.

[audience laughter]

And I'm sittin' there, thinking,

"The adults in the community have said that

I could protect myself, from a fire fuck ball...

[audience laughter]

...by hiding under wood.

[audience laughter]

I'm hiding under kindling!

Maybe I can get some sticks, so I can burn faster!"

[audience laughter]

And I thought, "Wow.

If this was a real attack, when the all-clear has sounded,

I could get up and go out to the playground, and melt!"

[laughter, applause]

I mean, first up, I'll be hon-- It was funny.

This is a funny idea, um...

the accident of it was-- was that it defined my comedy,

in a way, by...

you know, pointing me to-- with my problems with authority,

so that's part of what my act was about,

and so it-- and it was really the first time

where I-- and it's-- I say it, I think,

in-- in the-- in the-- in it,

but, you know, that was when I kinda went,

"Okay, the-- the adults I was dealing with

weren't being, you know, I was in--

I wasn't gonna start, I wasn't gonna trust

the-- the-- you know, what they said."

"Cause it wasn't the government telling me,

it was the teacher standing in front of me,

and get it going in case of a nuclear attack, but...

you-- get under your desk, and-- and, you know,

it wou-- you wanted to do that,

you wanted to-- us to do that.

You don't show us anything,

you don't show us 12,000 nuclear tests, you don't show us,

either when I'm at home watchin' TV with my parents,

and they'd show the bombs blowin' up.

You don't show it in school, you know?

"Your friend the atom,"

that-- that thing that they, you know.

Like, I guess it was a Disney thing,

that, you know--

And then they show the mushroom cloud.

You know, you watch this thing,

or you watch the guy standing there with those glasses,

-and the... -[explosion booming]

...shit flying over 'em, and you're goin',

"Really? So this is really gonna work?

This is your idea of getting under the table?"

Like, this-- I mean, you're literally under there like this,

and you-- and, you know.

You know, at the age of seven, eight, nine, you're not stupid.

[film reel narrator] Be sure and remember what

Bert the turtle just did, friends, because every one of us

must remember to do the same thing.

That's what this film is all about.

"Duck and cover."”

[film reel narrator 2] This is an official

civil defense film, produced in cooperation

with the Federal Civil Defense Administration,

and in consultation with the Safety Commission

of the National Education Association...

[sirens wailing]

[Lewis] I got 13 problems

before I'm gonna worry about nukes, maybe 50.

Maybe 100. In this-- in New York City.

I mean, where-- what, you want me to, bu--

Worry about nukes?

You kiddin' me?

Ah, you know, I'm a-- chances are--

Are good that we're fucked.

[laughs] Um, that's-- that's usually the way it works.

♪

[Claudia] What scares me the most

about becoming an activist is...

that what if I hadn't become one?

Um, and I was a just a drone. [chuckles]

And I was headed that way.

When I was first started, being an activist about this,

I-- I had gone through tremendous loss in my family.

And my father got sick, with a brain tumor,

and his doctors said it was probably from downwind.

My sister was diagnosed with melanoma.

I had to say, "Please don't call me an activist."

I was afraid for people to know what I was doing.

My boss would say,

"Are you going down to the test site to protest

with the GD hippies?"

And I would say, "Yes. What are you doing?"

I'm not sure, um, if they are still testing.

I know that years ago,

they were doing underground testing,

and we were able to stop that by our protest.

And we used to, uh, do our spiritual walk run for--

At least I know I did it for 11 years,

from, uh, it's 250 miles, we did 50 miles a-- a day.

Five-- five days to get to the test site

to protest against, uh, what was going on

and to shut, uh...

the test site down.

We have an alliance with the United States,

by treaty, to preserve the existence

of both our peoples.

Your people, my people. Together, our peoples.

And that's the term of diplomatic engagement,

our peoples!

[interviewer]

I'm both.

I stand on the Consti--

I am a patriot and an activist.

I don't sit on my butt.

♪

[lan] These fuckers violate the treaty

with their weapons of war,

these ARs, AKs, and weapons of mass destruction,

violate every Indian peace treaty on this continent.

You signed them, and we shouldn't be faced

with weapons of war, in a civil society.

We signed this for equal protection,

not for abuse by one party.

And that's what we're faced with.

Weapons of war.

It's not about my backyard. It's about my rights

and my obligations and responsibilities

to protect all Americans.

And you have the same responsibility

under the United States Constitution to protect

my people and your own,

and you need to step up as an American and do that.

And that's what makes me mad,

that other Americans think

they can just forget what has happened.

I'm not gonna let them.

We're gonna have our next meeting

third Saturday in April, okay?

So if you--

[Pauline] Third Saturday. Yeah, right.

[lan] If you read in there, we--

A year ago, or two years ago,

we said it's gonna be every quarter.

[Pauline] Okay.

[lan] So we'll see you then, and--

-Yeah. -[lan] Thank you.

[Keith] Where do you draw the line between deterrence,

and-- and the need for-- for peace,

and the need to stop nuclear testing?

Well...

nuclear bombs have been tested.

We have those deterrent systems in place.

We need to continue to maintain those

so-- so that we can live safely,

without the fear that some other nation's going to come

and try and blow us off the map.

But by the same token, it was-- it was the--

The anti-nuclear movement that brought a lot of awareness

to-- to the issues,

the issues of the health effects of nuclear bombs,

the issues of, do we need to test nuclear bombs,

is this a good idea?

Well, as long as there's nuclear bombs in the world,

you're gonna have to have a deterrent system

that works, and you have to--

You have to be able to rely on it,

because that's what keeps the peace

from a nuclear holocaust from erupting.

[Darwin] We were able to win the Cold War

with what we did at the site.

It contributed greatly to the winning of the Cold War.

You saw that Russia wasn't able to match what we were doing,

and so when it all came to the end,

what we did at the Nevada test site

helped win the Cold War,

helped assure the security of the United States,

of the people of the United States.

And so, nuclear testing contributed to that.

[explosion booming]

I'm an activist, obviously,

but sometimes that has a negative connotation,

because I'm also a patriot.

We own that flag, too.

We own that flag, too. And you know what?

That government, they work for us.

They work for us. They need to listen to us.

It's still my country.

This government, it's our government.

When they talk about "them," it's not them, it's us.

They work for us, they need to listen to us.

They need to watch out for us,

they need to not harm us, they need to protect us.

There's such a conflict in me because I felt like

I was being un-- I wasn't being patriotic,

I wasn't being religious, I wasn't following-- you know.

But I felt more spiritual

sitting in the desert across from the test site

than I ever did sitting at church.

[interviewer] Are you an activist,

are you a patriot?

Uh, I'm a-- I'm an oath keeper.

I keep the oaths.

Uh, I-- I'm an oat keeper.

I drink Oatly.

Um, no, I'm a, uh...

I-- I wouldn't call myself-- I was an activist.

Uh, when I was a kid, and I did it for a long time.

I consider my-- whatever activism I have, is...

uh, that I shoot my mouth off.

Um...

and that I try to-- uh, um, no, I--

What-- what I think has happened,

i-- is that, uh...

if we wanna get anything accomplished,

and I hate to say this...

um, but-- and-- and it's-- it's because I'm older,

you want a government to work, it has to work in the middle.

It doesn't work on either side.

And at times, uh, what we're gonna--

What we will get is the--

You know, the-- the right came along

and did its thing, and now the left will--

For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction,

SO we-- so the left did some stuff,

if the-- if the election goes a certain way,

the left may do more stuff.

Um, but in the end, if you really want a country

that's together, it has to be from the middle.

♪

[kids shouting playfully]

[announcer] The China Syndrome.

It's about people. People who lie...

and people faced with the agony of telling the truth.

It will start with a tremor in a nuclear power plant.

Where it will end will depend on three people.

[alarm blaring]

-[man] No! -[machines beeping]

-[man] No! -[machines beeping]

[announcer] The China Syndrome.

[worker] No, wait!

[announcer] Today, only a handful of people know

-what it really means. -[indistinct shouting]

[high-pitched humming]

I became active, um, because of this script

that came over my desk,

unsolicited, early in my career, called The China Syndrome.

Which was written by a guy named Mike Gray,

uh, who's a documentary filmmaker.

And I saw it as a, uh, a great horror movie.

Then, as I began the whole process of-- of,

uh, of-- of-- of working on this picture,

and realized that we needed to get some re--

Real legitimacy and credibility,

we hired two retired quality assurance experts from GE.

And they had had a loss of faith,

and they basically go on to the other side,

and so we used them to give us sort of the sequence of events

for our final meltdown.

And so we made this movie,

and, uh, we dealt with a fair amount of criticism.

Particularly from Jane's, uh, part of-- point of view,

where she was at.

And then 13 days after the movie came out,

we had the Harrisburg Three Mile Island, uh, incident.

And all of a sudden, I, like everybody,

was watching the news, and there was our...

our movie-- our movie,

uh, public relations spokesperson,

on a split screen, with Three Mile Island's person,

and-- and one began to see these unbelievable sort of s--

Uh, similarities.

[reporter] The accident occurred here,

at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant,

a dozen miles south of Harrisburg.

At about four o'clock this morning,

two water pumps that help cool Reactor Number Two shut down.

Officials say some 50-60,000 gallons

of radioactive water escaped into the reactor building.

Steam escaped into the atmosphere,

and radiation was detected as far as a mile away.

So this was an epiphany, uh, for me.

It was like somebody was trying to--

To-- to tell me something.

Uh, because we were under...

such pressure, and as it was turning out,

this thing was, uh, more accurate

than we had ever known.

So, that was sort of the beginning

of my pursuit into this.

And then, um, uh, a few years later,

Chernobyl happened.

Uh, and we watched that unfold and unveil.

And a couple of years after that,

I was just-- I was feeling...

I don't know, nostalgic,

but trying to trace my family roots, you know.

And my father, um, came from Belarus.

Uh, from the country of Belarus, he was born here,

but my grandfather was from there.

And as we tried to trace

where my father came from in Belarus,

we discovered that Chernobyl, which,

because of all the current events

that are going on with Ukraine right now,

we understand that's on the border,

just about, with Belarus.

That after that, uh, tragedy, Belarus took most of the fall,

because they were downwind of Ukraine.

And lo and behold, I couldn't find

my father's village anymore because it was downwind.

It was in that area of Belarus,

what was lost, it had been-- been vacated.

♪

I love my country, and, uh,

I'm s-- so proud about it, in SO many ways.

It doesn't mean things can't be better.

You still try to make things, improve things,

and-- and the quality of-- of what they are.

You don't stand fast.

Patriotism, again, is not one-- one thing,

it's a-- a-- it's a moving object.

Um, because the country's moving.

I-- I wanted to thank very much,

uh, Mr. Douglas for, uh, his great contribution

as a Messenger of Peace.

And I think it's a great inspiration

for all of us, uh, to talk out of the box.

And to make this world that he's,

uh, looking for, and we're all looking for, come a lot closer.

So it's a—- it's a big task for all of you.

[Michael Douglas] It, um, being the most patriotic,

in terms of whatever, uh, I can do to fight--

To eliminate nuclear weapons,

and the secrecy,

the secrecy that's been in-- involved

for something that is so poisonous,

has such a long lifespan.

Um, and how we have been-- uh, how we have been lied to,

by both our government, and-- and-- and corporate America.

It's my privilege...

to have this opportunity to recognize

the important role of scholars in addressing an issue

that has plagued the international community

for far too long.

Growing up in the Cold War, I was routinely reminded

of the threat of nuclear weapons,

either when I was hiding under my wooden desk...

uh, looking out for the bright light

that might fall.

Fallout shelters, duck for cover drills,

it was part of our-- our daily lives.

But the threat posed by nuclear weapons

is no less important today than it was during my childhood.

[explosion rumbling]

We may have fewer nuclear weapons,

but these weapons, and their delivery systems,

are more powerful and more sophisticated

than ever before.

I really cannot forgive, um, our leaders,

our politicians, for not addressing this,

this has been a-- a terrible pox on-- on-- on humanity.

This has-- it has created the worst fear

on our planet, that ever-- ever existed.

Uh, in terms of the possible contamination.

Uh, not to mention the weaponry.

Um, and we're seeing it, as we speak, right now.

Uh, we-- we-- we-- we-- we watch this sort of drift at--

Drift away because of climate issues

sort of took over.

Climate became-- it was more important,

although there's-- there is-- they're interrelated.

But now we're-- we're looking at a--

At a Russian leader who's...

again, speaking about nuclear weapons.

The one thing I'd hoped for in my lifetime

was to rid this planet, or to have some part of--

To rid this planet of nuclear weapons.

It looks like it's not gonna happen.

[plane whooshing]

[narrator] The United States is the only nation on Earth

to use atomic weaponry in wartime.

More than 200,000 people died

from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

♪

The greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise,

its secrecy, or its cost,

but the achievement of scientific brains

in making it work.

We have spent more than two billion dollars

on the greatest scientific gamble in history,

and we have won.

[static crackling]

♪

[narrator] Despite a moratorium on testing,

the United States continues to develop

its nuclear weapons program in earnest.

The Nevada test site remains operational,

and resumption of nuclear testing

is under debate.

The United States Constitution

made this great nation what it is today,

and we've lived here for 10,000 years

before the Common Era.

We're trying to share our knowledge

of how to live with the land.

We are part of the land,

I am water, you are water.

We need to protect the water. We need to protect the land.

We are sharing our knowledge with you.

10,000 years before the Common Era.

That's what we have to give.

I'm working with downwinders in other states,

and I'll tell you,

that little group of downwinders,

we've become, like, this community

and-- because it's a real sense of solidarity.

We've all lived the same thing, you know?

And it's our shared experience that kinda unites us.

I would just want to leave the message

to e-- everyone that we're all downwinders.

Everyone is a downwinder.

♪

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