Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing

by Richard L. Miller

In "a chilling documentary history of America's above-ground nuclear tests conducted during the 1950s and early 1960s, Miller takes on the subject and universalizes it, at the same time giving it the flavor of a Dos Passos novel" ("Kirkus Reviews").

Genres: History, American

548 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1991

Reviews

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells the story of American nuclear tests from Trinity in 1945 until the early 1960s. It also makes detours into non-American events, but makes mistakes there: it says that the Kyshtym disaster in the Urals in 1957 was was a criticality incident; in fact it was a chemical explosion; it says that on August 12, 1953 the Soviets exploded their second thermonuclear device; in fact it was the first one, called RDS-6s. Dozens of aboveground nuclear tests were conducted in Nevada during this period, many involving troop exercises; hundreds of underground ones after that and until 1992. What were the consequences? A mortician from a town on the Utah-Arizona border recollected, "My father and I were both morticians, and when these cancer cases started coming in I had to go into my books to study how to do the embalming, cancers were so rare. In 1956 and 1957 all of a sudden they were coming in all the time. By 1960 it was a regular flood." In 1956 an epic film about Genghis Khan starring John Wayne and Rita Hayworth was shot on location in Utah downwind of the tests. By 1981, out of 220 cast and crew 91 had developed cancer, and 46 had died. A professor of biology at the University of Utah commented, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30 some cancers to develop." Of course the health effects of radiation were much better known in the 1970s than in the 1950s, especially delayed effects such as cancer.

[G Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

So you really want to know about how devastating the fallout from all those open air atomic tests from the 50's were? Do you really want to know about how the government knew about how bad it would be and did nothing about it? Then read this book.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating overview of the nuclear testing efforts following Hiroshima. Book is very well cited. Found a lot of other things to read from it. Sad state of affairs as to how the government poisoned people in the US.

[Fred Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revealing, unsettling.

[Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

The comprehensive and authoritative source on nuclear weapons testing. A must read.

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scientist Robert Oppenheimer is famous for his apocryphal quote, supposedly uttered after the Trinity atomic bomb detonation: “I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.”
He was one of the few to express concern at the time, or to understand that there were things more important than maintaining a strategic advantage over Soviet scientists. Under the Cloud chronicles the decades of nuclear testing, as well as the research that led up to that moment, and the fallout—both literal and figurative—in the aftermath.
It started, as it often does, with speculative fiction, not surprisingly with a book by H.G. Wells about a hydrogen bomb. Eventually diagrams on chalkboards led to the most heinous of eureka moments in scientific history, and militaries and governments were informed of the potential for the Wunderwaffen. The United States got there first, but author Richard L. Miller argues, convincingly, that the Russians were a lot closer than even our most paranoid Red-baiters might have imagined. And that’s before one even factors in the spying and espionage.
All of the tragedies associated with both atomic testing and atomic warfare are treated at some length in the book. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are described, if not in excruciating detail, then at least in such a way that the reader can fill in the blanks in their mind. The story of a Japanese boy swimming with his friends was especially harrowing. One moment he and his friends were floating on the surface of the pond; the next he dived below the waterline, only to emerge seconds later to find the world on fire and his friends reduced to charred skeletons.
There are some strange and even ridiculous detours that leaven the impossibly grim with a bit of humor. The anecdote about an American agent who swindled the Russians by selling them what they thought was a nuclear bomb deserves to be made into a movie. Paranoia is many times a dangerous disease, but it can also underline the absurdity inherent in man’s suspicion of his fellow-man.
Too often, though, the sad truth which comes through in the book is that everyone involved—scientists, government officials, even coldhearted military men—were doing what they thought was right. It is easy in hindsight to say that tampering with such dangerous weapons was reckless, especially doing so on home soil without informing the population of the dangers. But the fear that other, hostile governments might do the same induced a kind of mad terror that made seemingly any act not just excusable, but justifiable. We now know that the Soviet high command was deeply dysfunctional, and probably couldn’t have agreed on the particulars of a lunch order without trying to strangle each other. At the time, they presented a unified front to the world, and when they sent Sputnik into orbit, they had, for all intents and purposes, mastery of the very heavens.
This isn’t to say that there is not blame to be shared around, or that those who lost their loved ones to rare cancers—especially their children—don’t have a right to compensation, and to rage at their government. It was also galling to witness the patronizing condescension with which the scientific community treated the concerns of those in the Southwest living (and dying) with the fallout. It turns out that sheepherders with limited education were right about the effects of strontium and that the credentialed geniuses who assured them it was harmless were wrong. That said, it’s important to note that many of the first and most grisly casualties of the bombs were men of science, figurative captains who went down with their ships.
But it’s ultimately a complex story that, if peopled by more than a few madmen, is bereft of the kinds of two-dimensional comic book villains one wishes existed, if only to make it all that much simpler.
With photos. Recommended for those interested in the history of the various atomic programs and tests conducted by various nations, but mostly the Americans and Soviets.

[Nolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will fascinate you. I grew up assuming the only people impacted by open-air nuclear testing were people like my parents, my older brothers, and perhaps me and those of us who lived under the clouds of fallout that billowed through southern Utah in the 1950s and early 1960s. I’ve joked with medical professionals that they can crank the X-ray machine down to half because I’m so radiated thanks to my government I probably already glow in the dark inside. I’ve watched all my brothers and both my parents deal with cancer, and I frequently wonder when my turn is coming. I was small by the time those open-air tests ended, so perhaps I escaped the worst of it, but I’m not convinced. I remember wiping that fallout gritty stuff off the roof of the family car. I was so small they had to sit me on the top of the car, and I remember rubbing that cloth on the roof trying to wipe off this coarse powdery stuff. I remember my sheepherding uncle telling stories of lambs born in the west desert without legs and/or distended stomachs. He used to remember how wool came off his sheep in patches. (That’s not normal for those of you who never sheered a sheep.) Atomic Energy Commission officials refused to let him sell his wool on the open market. Instead, they swooped in and carried away the wool insisting they needed it for research. As for that uncle, cancer killed him in 1966.

What this book taught me is that while people in southern Nevada and Utah bore the bulk of the horror of these open-air tests, the entire nation dealt with it at some level. That was a revelation to me. I read about little kids in Troy and Albany, New York who developed thyroid and other cancers because an open-air nuclear test loaded the vegetation with radiation that eventually found its way into the milk.

The other thing this book reaffirms to me is that all government lies. It’s not a partisan thing. Government lies if it feels it's in its best interest to do that. The book shows example after example of public statements from the Atomic Energy Commission that insisted that the fallout was safe and there was no danger associated with it. The author shows how federal officials manipulated data to minimize the impact of fallout on the populace and members of the military who involuntarily participated in the testing.

There’s a harrowing story here of a nuclear device that didn’t fire and required disarming on the fly by a couple of physicists.

Miller is a brilliant writer who guides you through the impact of fallout clouds and helps you track where they went. Virtually every state in the nation felt the poison lash of these tests. You think because you grew up in the deep South that you were somehow protected? Think again, according to Richard L. Miller. Granted, the fallout didn’t radiate you to the same degree as that guy hiking Bryce Canyon in Utah, but you got your share. Virtually every actor and director who was part of a 1956 John Wayne film entitled “The Conqueror” died of cancer. They filmed that in Snow Canyon, a Utah state park, just after an open-air test in Nevada a few days earlier. The cancers ultimately contracted by that cast and crew ran too high to be merely statistical blips. You’ll read that if you read this book.

The book points out what I’ve cynically believed all my life—that almost never did they blow a test when the winds blew toward the beautiful people of California. Those Mormons with their weird religion? Ah, they’re expendable. The book specifically points out that federal and military officials canceled tests if there was any danger that fallout would sift down on San Franciscans or Los Angelinos. I’ve always felt in my heart that was true, but this book provides the evidence.

I enjoyed Miller’s writing style. He took facts and figures that could have been as dusty and dry as the poison grit that fell on my parents and turned those figures into a compelling book that consumed me for two days—a book I couldn’t put down.