Collateral damage: American civilian survivors of the 1945 Trinity test

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Trinity test site was chosen, in part, for its supposed remove from human inhabitation. Yet nearly half-a-million people were living within a 150-mile radius of the explosion, with some as close as 12 miles away. None were warned or evacuated by the US government ahead of time. After the blast went off, fallout snowed down across the landscape for days, contaminating water and food sources. Children played with the hot flakes. Then pets and livestock began to die. Still, no one was told the truth, nor were government efforts made to evacuate the surrounding populations—despite warnings from Manhattan Project doctors and physicists that the radiation hazard for these civilians was, in their words, “very significant.” Nearly eight decades later, Trinity test “downwinders” still await government recognition and restitution.