America’s Secret Nuclear TestIn 1957, with the arms race in full swing, the Department of Defense had decided it was just a matter of time before an airplane transporting an atomic bomb would crash on American soil, unleashing a radioactive disaster the likes of which the world had never seen. This dirty bomb menace posed a growing threat to the internal security of the country, one the Pentagon wanted to make less severe by testing the nightmare scenario first. The organization needed to do this in a controlled environment, away from the urban masses, in total secrecy. No one outside the project, absolutely no one, could know.
Officials from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project decided that the perfect place to do this was at
Area 51.Source: DailyBeast.com
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-s...annie-jacobsen/ In 1957, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense conducted 29 nuclear tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds in "Operation Plumbob." Plumbbob released some 58,300 kilocuries of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere. This was more than twice as much as any other continental test series. This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 120 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 32% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests). This can be expected to eventually cause about 38,000 cases of thyroid cancer, leading to some 1900 deaths.
One of the test devices, "Hood," at 74 kilotons, was the largest nuclear device ever exploded in the continental US. It was also a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb, violating a solemn promise by our government to our people that no thermonuclears would ever be tested in the continental US. Lying f***k.
