Chapter 3 - Global fallout from nuclear testing

If I told you that millions of atoms of a radioactive metal called Strontium-90 are lodged in the bones and teeth of your skeleton, would you believe me?

If I told you that most of that radioactive metal poisoning is the direct result of nuclear testing, would you think I'm lying to you?

Manmade Volcanoes

In the early part of the 20th century, no scientist imagined that a single human-made or accidental explosion at one location could contaminate the entire Earth with ash and toxic residues like an erupting volcano.  

But in the years and decades following the first detonations of the atom bomb in the 1940s, it became clear to those in the scientific community that a single nuclear bomb could do the job. Not only that, but scientists later concluded that cumulative 'fallout' of microscopic fragments of metallic dust from hundreds of open-air nuclear bomb detonations would infiltrate every biological organism on Earth.  

A new household word

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, atomic scientists began issuing the first warnings that nuclear testing in the atmosphere by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. may be contributing to significant disease and death.  Notable scientists including Dr. Spock, Albert Schweitzer, and Silent Spring author Rachel Carlson warned of the perils of this strange, new chemical.  Their speeches, books and articles educated ordinary citizens about the dangers associated with chemical terms such as 'Iodine 131' and 'Strontium-90.'  

While citizens today are worried about such things as terrorism, the economy, and the H1N1 virus, baby boomers in the early 1960s were largely concerned about nuclear war, racial justice, communism and fallout from bomb tests.  Sometimes many topics would appear in the same context.  When members of a nationwide grassroots organization named "Women Strike for Peace" were called to testify in front of a 1962 Congressional panel of the 'House Committee on Un-American Activities' - a late McCarthy-era Communist-purging hearing - it was Blanche Posner of Scarsdale, New York, an official with the organization, who articulated that federal fears that the group's membership policy was letting Communism influence the group's scope and goals were unfounded. Although it became proven during the hearing that WSP did have a policy, unlike many 'liberal' causes at the time, of not caring if its members were or were not Communists, Ms. Posner, the second witness on the first of three days of the hearing, explained that the goal of the organization remained "inspired and motivated by mothers' love for their children" - that was all.  

Posner, like other unapologetic, testifying WSP members, said it was mother's love for children, not Communism, that motivated them to become activists:  "When they were putting their breakfast on the table, they saw not only wheaties and milk, but they also saw strontium 90 and iodine 131...They feared for the health and life of their children.  That is the only motivation..."

The government's "prosecutor" was no match for Ms. Posner's impassioned plea for understanding as she spoke over and despite the commanding words of the prosecutor: 'Witness!  Now Witness...'  Posner defiantly continued: 'If you gentlemen have children or grandchildren, you should be grateful to the Women Strike for Peace, or whatever peace movement is working to stop nuclear testing.  Every nuclear test has resulted in malformations, has resulted in stillbirths, has resulted in leukemia, has resulted in cancer, has resulted in the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.  I have given to you gentlemen this statement which presents some of the reasons why women are concerned.'

Unclean clean bombs

In 1956, fallout became a political issue when Adlai Stevenson ran for President.  Stevenson, an opponent of the bomb tests, used his speaking opportunities to level criticisms at his opponent, incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower, who was firmly in support of testing.  Eisenhower believed bomb tests were essential to avoid nuclear war and even took the position of his advisors that continued testing could actually make both war and testing safer.  The logic behind that idea was that because weapons experts were making some progress at reducing the 'fallout' from bomb tests additional testing would result in decreased radioactive pollution (from war or testing).  However, the 'clean' bomb was a pipe-dream concept that is still far from the reach of weapons designers and was used as a ploy to convince the masses to accept further weapons testing.

By 1957 and 1958, increasing pressure in the United States and from abroad - by scientists and humanitarian leaders with strong, clear-cut positions against continued weapons testing - persuaded Eisenhower to shift his stance.  Eisenhower met with the Russians and agreed on a moratorium on all bomb testing that would begin in late 1958 that would serve as a 'cooling off' period for the negotiation of a broad, comprehensive, lasting treaty.  

In 1960, Premiere Krushchev and President Eisenhower drafted such a treaty - that would only allow small underground nuclear tests - but disagreements over mutual inspections and other tensions led to the disintegration of talks.  When John F. Kennedy entered the Oval Office, he attempted in early 1961 to push towards a test ban treaty, but by then it was too late.  The Soviets got so pissed off that France, which argued it wasn't a party to the moratorium, was conducting nuclear tests (four of them) in 1960 that they began readying their test sites to start a bomb testing series in September 1961. That testing series, which lasted through November 1961, featured the biggest 'superbomb' ever tested on Earth - a 58-megaton device dubbed 'Tsar Bomba,' over 3,000 times the firepower of the device that leveled Hiroshima in 1945.  

The now-broken moratorium, simply a verbal agreement (not a treaty), was likewise thrown into the trash by the Americans, who resumed testing at the Nevada Test Site and later Pacific Proving Grounds in April 1962.  The Russians, who ended their first test series soon after Halloween 1961, 'retaliated' with another series including four tests half the size of 'Tsar Bomba' over August and September of 1962.  

Although fears of imminent nuclear war mostly trumped global fears over radioactive fallout in the early 1960s, fallout worries resurfaced in 1963 and later that year Kennedy offered to not test more bombs on one condition - if the Soviets did not too.  The Soviets agreed and the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which would ban bomb tests in sea, air and space, was born.  

Too little too late 

During the bomb testing from 1961 to 1963 (and primarily from September 1961 to Christmas 1962) the Americans and the Soviets exploded bombs that injected into the atmosphere the same amount of fallout over the Earth as would be created by over 7,600 Hiroshima bombs.  

Fallout from another 5,000 Hiroshima-equivalents coated the Earth mostly during U.S. hydrogen bomb tests in the 1950s.

Although many people have come to believe the fallout that emerged from the Hiroshima A-bomb attack largely dissipated in the atmosphere, this is a misconception. It stems from an organized coverup by the U.S. government and medical institutions to conceal the fact that the suburbs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki received dangerous quantities of radiation in their environment in 1945 as a consequence of 'rain-outs' (when precipitation pushes airborne debris down to the ground); just minutes after mushroom clouds drifted outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a rain event brought radiation down to the ground. Radiation measurements in the months and years after the attacks showed that these suburbs are 10 times more radioactive than the urban areas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!  (Data gathered by scientists who recently tested the soils in a 'black rain' suburb of Nagasaki found that plutonium levels are 10 to 100 times greater than elsewhere in Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Not only are those 'black rain' areas still contaminated, but the vast majority of manufacturing materials used in products or recycled since 1945 has radioactivity from the A-bomb attacks on Japan. To this day, nearly all steel on Earth, many old and new books, and even ice core samples taken from the North Pole have numerous atoms of radioactive particles directly traceable to the fallout from the Hirshoma and Nagasaki bomb attacks that is still detectable. Now if you consider that the superpowers tested nuclear bombs in the 1950s and early 1960s that spewed the equivalent amount of fallout as 12,000 Hiroshima bombs over the Earth, you probably can imagine that steel, books and ice cores are nowadays upwards of 12,000 times more radioactive than they would have been in 1945. You may be wondering to yourself 'How did we survive?' Top scientists and government officials of the 1960s also wondered the same thing. There was a moment in time when they secretly feared that the fallout may have damaged Earth's life-sustaining qualities 'beyond the tipping point.' As we will discover in the following paragraphs and sections, the fate of life on Earth was spared from immediate destruction from the 'nuclear autumn' of this 'soft nuclear war' but millions of humans and other life was caught in the crosshairs of environmental radioactive assault and were sacrificed on the altar of the atom.

Prefixes, conversions and equivalents

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