In the summer of 1945, as world war two was coming to an end, the United States detonated
the world’s first atomic bomb.
But it wasn’t on Hiroshima.
The bomb actually exploded in New Mexico, resulting in zero casualties; it was a test.
Since that day, the US has conducted more than a thousand similar tests - many on
land, others underground, and even some in outer space!
So, where exactly has the US tested nuclear weapons?
Well, after the war ended, the United States moved its nuclear testing to isolated regions
in the Pacific Ocean - namely the Marshall Islands.
From 1946 to 1958, the US performed 67 tests on the remote archipelago, one of which was
a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima explosion.
Before testing began, the US government evacuated some - but not all - of Marshall Islands’
residents.
Nevertheless, thousands suffered from radioactive fallout.
By the end of the 1940’s, the Soviet Union had developed its own atomic bomb, increasing
pressure on the US to expand its nuclear program.
So in 1951, while it was still testing in the Pacific, the US established another test
site in rural Nevada.
Over the next four decades, more than 900 nuclear weapons were detonated at this site,
making it the most bombed place on earth.
Although most of the explosions occurred underground, about one hundred were on land, with mushroom
clouds so large they could be seen from Las Vegas.
The government wanted to see the real-world repercussions of such a weapon, as, being
at the height of the Cold War, the US was foreseeing a potential nuclear attack.
Officials even constructed a makeshift “survival town” complete with fake buildings, homes
and electrical substations near ground zero.
In 1961, the Soviet Union tested the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated, called
the ‘Tsar bomba’.
In response, the US expanded its nuclear testing outside Nevada, to more sites in New Mexico,
Colorado, Mississippi, Amchitka, a tiny island in southernmost Alaska.
Five tests were even conducted in outer space to observe the effects of nuclear explosions
at high altitudes.
With the end of the Cold War and fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US ended its nuclear
testing program.
In the 1990s, nearly every country in the world signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosions.
But the treaty never went into full effect, as the US and seven other world powers, including
China and North Korea never ratified it, despite the fact that the US was the first to sign
it.
As a result, non signatories such as India and Pakistan detonated nuclear weapons as
recently as 1998, and North Korea conducts tests regularly, against international protest.
The last time the United States tested a nuclear weapon was in 1992.
Today, the government is more focused on providing reparations to those affected by the blasts.
For example, radioactive fallout in Nevada routinely blew east to towns in Utah, causing
an uptick in cancer and brain tumors.
After decades of campaigning from victims, congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation
Act in 1990.
So far, $2 billion dollars has been paid to more than 32,000 people.
Similar reparations have been paid to residents of the Marshall Islands.
So although nuclear testing is a distant memory to many Americans, those in close proximity
to the blasts still feel its effects everyday.
The United States was not the only country testing nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
So, where exactly did Russia secretly test nuclear weapons?
Find out in this video up top.
And to learn about how we know other countries are conducting secret tests, you can watch
this video by DNews below to see the process explained.
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