Photos of something we all hope no one now living ever sees again

[DFW]

These were taken by my father. Knowing what we know now, I can't believe they
let him get this close to one of these, but for a while, the U.S. military (as
well as their Soviet counterparts) was using their own personnel for their own
private lab rats, so I guess I shouldn't be shocked.

Let's all hope that no one ever again views something like this in person.

Let's also all hope that the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney never again
are granted the power to decide to use one of these. We need other deciders.

[Hydra]

1. You don't build something you don't intend to use

Nukes will be used at some point. A LOT of them. Some of us might even survive that experience.

This has always been the point that makes me think we are REALLY STUPID monkeys.

[rodeodance]

4. sociology has a name for that 'the technological imperative"

[Hydra]

6. Is that the concept of

If it can be built, someone will build it?

or are we taking about "You technology will be the death of you"?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

8. we are stupider than monkeys

[sandyj999]

2. Amen to That. n/t

[DFW]

3. If they ARE ever used..........

They will probably be detonated in the name of
Allah, the Merciful, or Jesus, the Savior.

How perverse is that?

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

5. It was just a few years back

that we all were finally able to relax on the whole "duck and cover" thing.

Suddenly it has returned, but the difference this time is that we are made to be more afraid of our own nukes . . . and what could happen should they fall into the hands of a doofus Promise Keeper, as they have.

[DFW]

7. We SHOULD be afraid

My father beat cancer once, and died of it when it came
back elsewhere.

[ThomWV]

9. Clearly that was a very small test - was it an artillery shell?

Also, it was above ground which is a bit odd.

[DFW]

11. No, it wasn't an artillery shell

Those photos were taken from miles away from ground zero.

It was indeed above ground. It was before above ground testing
was banned by the USA and the USSR. Not odd at all--unfortunately.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Testing was above ground until the early 1960s

both on the Nevada Test Site and in the Pacific.

Then the Soviets and U.S. signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, due to worries about excessive radioactive fallout.

France has continued to test its nukes in French Polynesia, which angers the local islanders, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

[datasuspect]

44. is it just me

or did that blast turn night into day?

if so, that's pretty weird.

it'd be interesting to see the time sequence of this.

[Occulus]

10. If anyone can link to any videos of these tests,

or other tests, I'd really appreciate it. Preferably, one long, uncut test, from detonation to the dispersal of the mushroom cloud.

....

Does anyone else find it somewhat odd that, even when shown such in school, we're not given the full film? I have yet to see a decent-quality detonation, from beginning to end. All I've ever seen are snips and clips.

[DFW]

14. I couldn't tell you if videos were taken here.

My dad passed away years ago. These were from his photo
archives, which were vast (he was one of the last true
print journalists--our friendship with Helen Thomas stems
from the fact that he and she were colleagues for over
four decades).

He was invited to this test in 1957, and hand-held video recorders
were unknown then. They were told to look away during the fireball
and he had to take the first two shots with his back turned.

[qdemn7]

30. The Nuclear Weapon Archive

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/">The Nuclear Weapon Archive is one of the best sites around.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html">The Tsar Bomba The World's Largest Nuclear Weapon Yield FIFTY Megatons. That is 4,167 times the yield of Little Boy, the bombed dropped on Hiroshima.

http://www.nv.doe.gov/default.htm">DOE Nevada Site Office has a number of short clips, but I do not think you are going to find a video that shows what you want. It would simply run too long, as most of it would be cloud dispersal which would take hours. If you do find one, let me know, I would like to see it myself.

[conscious evolution]

33. Wow!

Before:
After:

That Island is just gone.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. I hope those who should follow the orders

refuse to

[DFW]

15. I hope those who have the power to give those orders never will!

[Raksha]

20. When it comes to it, they WILL refuse...

or we're all doomed.

[razors edge]

34. Unfortunately, they will not refuse.

An old friend of mine retired from SAC as a missile base commander, part of his job was to secretly overide launch capability and send the launch orders to the men in the silos, they were tested regularly and would never get any notice beforehand, they were all real launches as far as they knew.

He said it was similar to what you may see in a movie, two men, one enlisted NCO, one junior officer, each with a key and a colt 45 ACP.

If one man failed to turn the key, the other was to shot him immediately. He said they never once failed to carry out the orders.

My job in the Corps was to launch F-4s, we had no idea whether the funny looking bright orange bomb with the radiation warnings were real or not, we loaded and launched, for all I know the pilot and RIO could be kept in the dark until they were in the air, then have their mission changed and after the necessary in flight refueling, deliver a real device never knowing when they took of they would be killing indiscriminately.

The DOD has studied the possibilities and limited the possible outcomes to a bare minimum.

[blues90]

16. Man is one sick stupid animal !

I am so tired of living with some sort of threat of some bomb and all these insane wars . I have lived with this all my life . Even after the cold war ended there were plenty of doc's showing how these nukes were still not safe in in the hands of people and how they could go off by accident .

This is one of those horrid inventions that will never go away , even with the best of intentions this crap will be burried and still never be safe .

If there was a flood as described in the bible and I am not religious at all , but if there were such an event and there is a god then this was his way of walking away and allowing man to go his own .

And look what we have come to , instead of getting along as the human race we find more ways of destruction and killing and murder . All the money and time and for what .

I really have no desire to live in a world with so much greed and lies that control everything . If there is no freedom as is does seem where we are headed then what are we really , what is the point if everything we do or think is monitored by some freaks .

so what if you go to your job and bring home a check as a slave now and come home to sit of find some false entertainment , go to sleep and wake up , do it all over again for life and nothing is really yours .

Many years ago you could claim a bit of land and all your efforts went toward your rewards , not to middle men or corporations who take the most of your labor . Perhaps ,man did not realize when he had it livable even if he did not live to be 9- or 100 . who cares , a short life still can be a full life rather than a prolonged state of false reality and even that has now become a threat .

so go ahead and blow the planet up , many who suffer now of such horrors may find it a relief or at the very least have an end to their suffering .

We could have made a great world but instead we chose some sort of illusion of happiness .

We sit here and promote human gods as sports figures or actors and musicians and politicians as if what they do is so much better and needed than the common worker and we do it willingly as fools . Entertainment is one thing but god like admiration is quite another .

I don't recall ever seeing garbage cans or dump sites in the old days , people made things and used them for a lifetime .

[canadianbeaver]

42. I know what it is you speak of.........mankind (NOT)...man o war.....

man o war and destruction.....welcome to planet earth(NOT) Planet fu*ked more like it....

is there anything that would unite MAN/WOMAN on this planet???? I have searched and looked,...but all that I could find was the paradise in my MIND...when there is a chance that someone can have something that someone else doesn't or someone else wants...there will be no peace on earth....someone will always want what you have and more...and be willing to do anything to get it....example: USA vs. ________...Fill in the blank....it's not just the US...It's anyone/thing with power...and as that old saying still goes and holds true...POWER CORRUPTS..AND ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY!!!

We are slaves...bought and paid for..by the elite.

[Adsos Letter]

17. I don't mean to deny in any way the seriousness of the issue you raise...

...but you should also post these in the photography forum, as I know the folks over there would like to see these, and many may miss them.

[DFW]

18. I didn't know there was such an animal

I'm sure you're right.

Tell me where I find it, and I'll get to it tomorrow.
It's 1:30 AM here, and I have to be in Stuttgart by 10:00
AM tomorrow morning.

[Adsos Letter]

19. just go to the main menu a choose "photography"...

...and "Guten (early) Morgen"...

[DFW]

41. Thanks for the suggestion. This is done. n/t

[HeeBGBz]

27. Here's a link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=280

Great photos of a disturbing image. I used to have dreams of these.

[DFW]

28. OK, thanks for that

I'm up WAY past my bed time (gotta get up in 3 hours).

Mañana.............

[BrklynLiberal]

21. Did your Dad suffer any affter-effects from being so close??

Radiation related, I mean.
I would assume the psychological after-effects would go without saying.

[DFW]

22. I don't recall any immediate ones

Don't forget, at the time, neither the US military nor the press
was told of the dangers of being anywhere near these things, so they
had no clue.

Long-term? Who's to say? His parents died in their 60s (smoked way too
much) of heart attacks, but his maternal grandmother was 91. My dad died
at 78, beat prostate cancer at 70, succumbed to pancreatic cancer at 78.
Most pancreatic cancer patients die within 8 weeks of diagnosis. He lasted
eleven months. He was 35 when he was at this test. At age 77 he had
a figure like a model, and could beat guys 25 years younger at tennis.
Maybe he would have lived to be 100, and maybe it just wasn't in his
genes.

We'll never know.

[BrklynLiberal]

23. Wow. You've got some great genes there.

[DFW]

24. I wish!

Neither of my parents lived to be 80, and only one of my grandparents did.
The one that did, however, lived to be 102 with all his marbles intact.

My maternal grandfather sent out a Christmas card when he was age 99. It
had a photo of himself, looking very much his age, with the caption:

"COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASONED"

He was absolutely one of the coolest humans I ever met. I could have used
a few more of his genes. As it is, I snuck away from a planned rendezvous
with the Grim Reaper 3 years ago, and I wonder if he's been looking for me
ever since?

[BrklynLiberal]

43. It does sound like the odds are inyour favor....

:thumbsup: :hi:

[truedelphi]

25. My dad's photo legacy was a bit different

During the final days of the War in Germany, a close buddy of his was called to go off on
a photo assignment. Wasn't allowed on his way out to discuss what it would involve (Or maybe he wasn't even told.)

So then it is ten or twelve years later (the fifties) and my sister and I are told as kids - don't ever go into the bottom of the living room desk. The left hand, bottom drawer is out of bounds for you kids.

You know how kids are - they always go for the hidden, secret, forbidden stuff. And we could have done it many times - on weekend nights when there were babysitters we could have attempted to discover the deep dark secrets of the bottom drawer. (I mean my parents never warned anyone else to keep us out of it.)

But the way we had been asked not to go there was just too sad. Too mournful. We were actually SCARED of going there.

So now flash forward to a Thanksgiving in the 1980's. Sister and I are both grown ups in their late twenties.

There is a pause in the conversation around the dinner table and my sister pipes up, "So what was in the drawer anyway?"

"The drawer?" My parents respond.

"You know -- the drawer in the living room desk. The bottom drawer."

"They're both old enough," my dad sighs."Plus it turned out quite differently then my friend and I originally thought. There is no harm now in telling them the story."

Apparently my dad's friend was called away to do a major photographic shoot of all the concentration camps that were close to that theatre of the war. He was appalled and sickened by the sights that his camera took. He was also worried.

He secretly made copies and gave a full set to my father. To keep in case this evidence of the Holocaust was never released as news. In case it was covered up.

I never saw the photos. Over the last ten yeaars, I have had Jewish friends insist that I see to it that the photos be turned over to the Holocaust Memorial and its National Collection in Washington.

However that was not to be. My father went through a period in the early 1990's where he wanted no more association with "the war where our government made me go and kill my German cousins." I briefly mentioned the photos summer of 2002 when my father died.

"Oh" said my mother. "Your Dad got rid of those a while ago. They were just too horrible for anyone to ever have to see."

I think that probably the originals did make it to the Holocaust Center in D.C.

My father's involvement with WWII is the main reason that I am a pacifist. As I have mentioned before on DU, he explained war to me back when I was about ten in a way that I have never forgotten. "In war there are no heroes. There are the bad guys who start the war and after several years of involvement become de-humanized and act like animals. And then there are the good guys who come in and are able to win before they are de-humanized. The Germans had been fighting since 1939. If we had had to continue with our war machinery for another year or two, my guess is we would have become just as barbaric as the Gerries.

"But the real thing about it is that the German people would have never ever done anything like what they did, if thugs and crooks had not taken over the German government and stolen the German way of life."

Whenever I remember those words of his, I get chills. It can and is happening here.

[DFW]

26. Even so, you're right

As someone who is married to a German and spending much of
the year in Germany, I can surmise that what was on those
photos is also something no one should ever have to witness again.

[conscious evolution]

35. This needs to be repeated over and over

But the real thing about it is that the German people would have never ever done anything like what they did, if thugs and crooks had not taken over the German government and stolen the German way of life."

[DFW]

40. I'm in Germany right now, just came back from the States last week

And MAN does THAT ring a bell!

[Zandor]

29. Praise The Lord! I see a figure in the smoke!

Bottom photo. Figure is standind on the large cloud at the bottom of the photo. :)

[DFW]

32. Great. My dad unknowingly captured the next generation

of Rohrschach inkblots.

(always knew those tests were good for SOMETHING........)

[mikelewis]

38. That's just the ghosts from Nagasaki and Hiroshima; forever trapped in Oppenheimer's Inferno.

[hunter]

31. My wife's dad witnessed one of these tests up very close.

Closer than most. They put him in a hole and told him to close his eyes. He was one of the guys they marched around during Operation Plumbbob to see how well soldiers would hold up on a nuclear battlefield.

After the exercise they got rid of their clothes and washed the radioactive dust off of them, and pretty much told them "no problem."

Meanwhile they were keeping records good enough to estimate each soldier's radiation exposure.

It didn't turn out well for a lot of the guys, but my father-in-law doesn't seem to have suffered for it.

They were lab rats, that's for sure.

I've met a couple of people who witnessed atomic explosions up close, including Hiroshima survivors.

That truly is the last thing any one living ever wants to see again.

[GeorgeGist]

36. fear this

Nagasaki


Hiroshima

[conscious evolution]

37. Good photos

If you could call them that.
Anyone notice how the ground shock wave gets closer and closer during the sequence?

[Minimus]

39. my dad was part of the testing at the bikini atolls - he was on a ship and

They made the sailors come to the deck for the explosions. They had to turn their back to the island, put their face down in the crook of their arms and keep their eyes closed.
He said the heat on his back was intense and even with his eyes closed buried in his arms he could see a the very bright bright light. Later on the sailors were allowed to actually go on some of the islands and Dad recalls playing football on the beach!!

This was around 1956 or 58.


Dad is 73 and so far no known medical issues but I had him register with the National Association of Atomic Veterans.