Downwind from the bomb… how we nuked Utah

The tests get dirty

It was not until the series of tests code-named Upshot-Knothole, begun in March 1953, that any real discussion about the dangers of radiation from the atomic blasts began in the local press. The new tests were larger and dirtier and produced more fallout, often dusting the downwind area with a light pink ash.

Most of the discussion at the time centered around the uncertainty. Was radiation dangerous?  There were rumors that some livestock and possibly a few people had developed lesions or sores, but the public remained unconcerned enough that children played in the grey and pink “snow,” writing with their fingers on the windshields of cars.

Indeed, right on through the Teapot series of atomic shots in 1955, virtually no one considered the situation serious enough to call for an end to the tests.

Like lambs to the slaughter

In 1956, the issue first came up in court. The Bulloch family, along with 6 other Cedar City sheep herding ranchers, filed suit in federal district court alleging that their herds had been decimated at least in part because of fallout from the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests.

The herds had been covered in fallout and grazed on radioactive vegetation at their winter range in Nevada, some 40 miles from the test site, on their way back to Cedar City for the spring birthing season. Within days, over 4,400 sheep were dead, including a great percentage of newborn lambs, which were stillborn, deformed, or died shortly after birth.

Even after the incident, none of the Cedar City herders had questioned the ongoing tests. They believed, as did everyone in southern Utah at the time, that they were a necessary part of maintaining national security (see cartoon, below). They were confident that the experts employed by the government would figure out what had caused the losses, that they would be informed of the cause, and compensated if appropriate.

The ranchers were reluctant to file suit. Only after continued insistence by the experts from the AEC that the deaths were “the natural result of unprecedented cold weather during the lambing and shearing of the sheep, inadequate feeding, unfavorable winter range conditions, and infections diseases of various types”  did the ranchers become frustrated enough to take formal action.

The ranchers charged that in addition to causing the deaths of so many sheep, the government had been negligent in failing to warn them about the tests.

->Next page: Frustration and futility