When you travel into the Spring Mountains of Southern Nevada, there’s a lookout point where you can see across a vast expanse of desert mountains that includes the Nevada National Security Site (formerly known as the Nevada Test Site). Between 1951 and 1963 the U.S. military ran tests and exploded hundreds of nuclear weapons in an effort to counter the Soviet threat during the early years of the Cold War. (At the same time, the Soviet Union was doing the same thing in response to the American threat.)
Back in the day, nuclear “tourists” used to come up to these mountains to witness the fireballs and mushroom clouds from a distance of about sixty miles. The military had a policy of not announcing these tests in advance, but somehow word got out.
People love to see things go boom, but think of the downsides… I wonder what the Southern Paiute people thought about what was happening to their homeland.
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