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Not only was the Atomic Age crucial in history, but was so impactful where movies were based around its destruction. Movies like Radium Girls and Radioactive speak of the effects radiation has on the human body. Documentires like Downwind and the Chernobyl mini series highlight the effects even further. These doom towns are featured in films too, such as Kalifornia and the unfinished RIver Pheonix movie Dark Blood. In Dark Blood, the main antagonist Boy speaks about his passed on wife and how after the nuclear fallout settled in their town/reservation she had developed a strange kind of cancer. There is even a moment when the two main characters, Harry and Buffy, run through an abandoned town for safety but soon realize by the help of Boy that the town was far from safe. Desite these being films they do highlight the awareness that should be brought to nuclear testing and its pros and cons
Not only Doom Towns had to deal with the consequences of Nuclear Fallout, but Native American reservations did too. Many were affected by nuclear testing, especially the Western Shoshone land near the Nevada Test Site, as well as the Navajo Nation, where uranium mining and nuclear testing have had harmful effects on the environment and the health of the natives in the area. The impacts of nuclear testing and uranium mining continue to be felt in these communities, with high rates of cancer, contaminated water, and ongoing environmental degradation. Nuclear radiation effects all, and even still to this day where uranium mining and nuclear testing still leave lasting effects on these lands.
The concept of "Doom Towns" originated in 1955 as part of the United States' nuclear testing program. These towns, complete with houses, and mannequins, were constructed in the Nevada desert to study the effects of nuclear blasts on civilian life. The data collected from these tests not only provided valuable insights into the impact of nuclear weapons but helped shed light down the road of nuclear effects. This information was essential in helping other regions prepare for potential nuclear threats by developing emergency response plans and building fallout shelters, a statement piece of te cold war era. The legacy of Doom Towns lives on as a lesson, serving as a reminder of the pure power of nuclear weapons and nuclear waste can have on the enviroment and human health.
Typically, the word nuclear is something that many are scared of and even shun away from its usage in the past. Nuclear bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the nuclear meltdown of Chernobyl have all played a bad part in nuclear bombs and even nuclear plants. But not only that negative aspect, but the existance of "Doom Towns" or "Survival Towns" came into existance all the way back to the mid to late 1940s and bled into the late 2010s in which envriometal and societal discomfort became very relevant.
Despite the negative outlook Nuclear plants and radiation gets just because of the association with very hard hitting nuclear meltowns and attacks, radiation actually has a few benefits.
Fission and fusion are two different types of nuclear reactions. Fission is the process of splitting a heavy atomic nucleus into two or more lighter nuclei. This process releases a large amount of energy and additional neutrons, which can then go on to initiate further fission reactions. On the other hand, fusion is the process of combining two light atomic nuclei to form a heavier nucleus. This process also releases a large amount of energy. Fusion is the process that powers the sun and other stars. Both fission and fusion have the potential to provide significant amounts of energy, but they have different challenges and applications.
Radiation today is very crucial in the medical, research, and industrial fields. Radiation is used in medicines to help diagnose patients with illnesses aswell as the effectiveness at killing cancer cells within a tumor. Treatment with radiation is painless, but on the other hand, radiation can cause an assortment of things. In small doses, radiation can not only kill cancer cells but healthy cells too. Nausea, mouth sores, tooth decay, skin changes, and hair loss are all examples of the disadvantages MEDICALLY dosed radiation can cause. So what about unmedicated radiation?
During the bombings of Nuclear test sights, these organizations would collect American officials or ctizens to have a front row seat to the destruction to these doom towns. Because of the underlying fear of a nuclear attack in the 1950s and early 1960s, these tests and towns began to bloom all over the US. The FCDS produced a range of leaflets and film, aswell as nuclear attack drills and live events to coax Americans into their duties of civil defense. Two of the main towns in Yucca Flats, promptly named Doom Town I and II, had a hope to throw the atomic culture into a positive swing but instead turned into imagries of death, decay, and nuclear nihilism. As mentioned before, many people didn't think of nuclear testing as a hazard, just a way to promote patriotism, and that fallout was nothing more than particles of matter in the air. But that was far from the truth. Ionizing radiation caused from nuclear fallout kills or sickens those heaily or substantially exposed to it, killing vegitation and wildlife as it becomes more and more potent. Land, fishing waters, and freshwater sources would continue to be extremely toxic for tens of thousands of years which can pose a serious threat to those in close proximity.
Ever since the first test done by Robert Oppenheimer in 1945, over 2,000 have taken place in areas like Nevada, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alaska, and Colorado. In the early years on nuclear testing, not many people thought about the painstaking effects on the enviroment and on human life. Just like the effect of ciggaretes on smokers, nuclear fallout's effect on people and animals wasn't that thought about until the early 1990s where the republic of kazakhstan commemorated the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test side on August 29th.
But that doesn't mean radiation still effected people daily. Going back to the doomtowns, many manequins were used to study the effects of the bombings on human bodies and if they would survive a nuclear blast. Within these blasts came audiences, of "ordinary" americans, to the experiments. men and women would gather to watch these Doom Towns detonate. As time passed, those same audience members would develop strange cancers or bare children with mutations or complications unbeknownst to them. The effects of radiation on the human body are tough and dangerous, but are there any good uses of radiation?