Eli5: what happens to the areas where nuclear bombs are tested?
In: 3652
There are still sites which where the people who lived there can’t return.
They tried to get compensation but got only a little bit. So the US, UK and France destroyed the home of thousands of people.and did not take any responsibilities for it.
If you ever played Halo and heard the word “glassed” as in they glassed the planet Reach that is pretty much what happens just in a big circular area instead of a beam like the Covenant uses.
If it’s a ground/near-ground detonation, that is. It’ll also leave a circular crater from the dust that was sucked up into the mushroom cloud and there will be a layer of glass formed from rapidly superheated sand and other minerals that all melt together.
[The resulting mineral is called Trinitite](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitite)
It’s more akin to volcanic glass than the glass you’re used to seeing in windows and glasses, in that its not usually clear as much as brittle and smooth in appearance.
The area itself is often irradiated, though not as much as you might expect (still very radioactive right after), depending on where the bomb was detonated relative to the ground (way above/sky, below, near ground, or on the ground). Most of the radiation is residual from dust that is exposed to the initial blast as that is when most of the energy is given off, from that chain reaction. Hence why Hiroshima/Nagasaki are liveable today, they were above ground blasts that were designed to annihilate buildings and civilians, not upheave the Earth and ruin the soil permanently (though I know arguably it did, I just mean it could be much, much worse)
There’s a lot more issues from the residual radiation nowadays such as the Bikini Atoll residents who suffer much much higher cancer rates and I believe it was declared uninhabitable. The radioactive particles got in the water and fish and whole ecosystem. Not an easy way if any to fix that.
I assume you’re mostly referring to radiation.
An atomic weapon uses nuclear power to detonate a bomb for it’s energy… not for it’s radioactive effect on the area. And nuclear energy is extraordinarily efficient.
But the radioactive effects are still there for at least a short time. The tests done in New Mexico still had nearby residents go to the sites after the bomb tests and got exposed to a lot of radiation. The government didn’t even bother to tell them to stay away for awhile.
Thanks to Oppenheimer, a lot of indigenous, non white minorities living in nuclear testing areas such as New Mexico, Nevada etc are coming forward to explain how they were displaced, told lies about the effect of radiation. While the movie explains the story of the origins, it does not explain the real thousands of tragedies that happened.
Depending on the program, people were displaced or left in a dangerously close area. Bombs were tried after a very light explanation like the ones in this [propaganda clip](https://youtu.be/Q3zHLYuIfoQ)
(The Reason I say it’s propaganda is because the inhabitants of Bikini were already told the program was going to take place and were asked to stage the scenes so it could be aired in the US, like the US government was doing its due diligence/show the world it was going farther than anyone else in war technologies).
To this day Atoll [Bikini](https://youtu.be/Q3zHLYuIfoQ) cannot be inhabited and the people suffered terrible consequences of H bomb being tested on their land.
It’s an awful can of worms. Depending on the country that carried the tests, different places were affected. Northern Africa, Australia, Oceania, Oural and central Asia.
Just follow the ethnic minorities of a country that developed nuclear weapons during the Cold War and you’ll find suffering.
It melts the sand into an element called Trinitite (named for the Trinity site). My husband visited there on a work trip and the person conducting the tour made a big display of saying that it was ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED to take any of the glass formed by the blast, and now he would turn away for approximately 30 seconds while the visitors had a chance to “appreciate the surroundings.” And no, we “don’t have” any Trinitite in our home.
I live in Northwest Arkansas and there is a large population of Marshallese from the Marshall Islands (R.M.I) I’ve been told that may of them are here due to an agreement after US used their homes to test nukes. https://www.mei.ngo/marshallese-in-arkansas
I read a biography of a couple who lived a normal life out west. One of their hobbies in the ‘60s was using the Geiger counter to find any rocks that “clicked” and storing them under their home in case they became valuable some day
Kyle Hill on YouTube has a series called Half-time Histories. All about radioactivity, some about your specific question. I love those videos as they’re both educational, interesting and terrifying. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNg1m3Od-GgNmXngCCJaJBqqm-7wQqGAW&feature=share8
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