Ed Helms

There's a radiation disposal site that's not very well managed in the San Fernando Valley over by Woodland Hills that I didn't know about until I lived there briefly.

Spooky.

And what did they know about the effects of nuclear testing like this at the time?

Like, did they had enough time passed since, you know, they were actually detonating these bombs that they understood the long term health effects on people?

Or were they just kind of like, ah, blow it up in the sky?

That's a great question.

I mean, the first nuclear reactors were built in the 50s.

We're in 1962 now.

There is a lot still unknown.

I covered another nuclear disaster, a reactor meltdown in Canada that Jimmy Carter showed up to help fix when he was a young soldier.

And part of that story is how the rescue mission to prevent the reactor from melting down.

Their judgment was clouded by how little they knew.

And that was just a few years before this.

Obviously, we're post-World War II.

So, you know, the horrible effects and fallout from the Japanese detonations of hydrogen bombs were well known and the radiation fallout and so forth.

But the specific dangers at play, I think that they're sort of trying to figure that out with these experiments.

This is a weird thing because they're putting these ads, or not ads, they're putting the news in the newspaper and encouraging the public to sort of like have fun with the spectacle of unimaginable destructive power.

It's almost like pull up a lawn chair and just watch this horrible thing.

And I do think that part of that may have been a little bit of a propaganda angle to just sort of be like, hey, don't worry, it's not that big a deal.

But it also reflects a lack of awareness about the actual dangers at play.