Atomic history on Google Earth

[As I race to finish the book by Monday (!), here's a random but fascinating thing that popped in my alternative universe of aerial robotics. It's a post from a brilliant but eccentric engineer who goes by the name of Jack Crossfire. What follows are his words and images (I haven't verified them) - ca] 

Everyone's seen the Nevada nuclear test site on Google Earth:

 

And everyone's seen the videos & photos of operation Desert Rock IV in 1951, where soldiers happily watched a 21 kiloton nuclear explosion from trenches 4 miles away & sitting positions 7 miles away:

 

 

But on Google Earth you can see remains of trenches 2 miles from an explosion. Google doesn't have any any photos or videos of this experiment, Desert Rock V, except for these haunting remains on satellite photos:

 

Soldiers were placed 1 & 2 miles from a 43 kiloton explosion. Needless to say, most of them are no longer with us, but through the magic of Google Earth, you can see the eery remains of their trenches:

Comments

[FN]

Amazing. It seems crazy now, but they were different times. Richard Rhodes wrote about this http://tinyurl.com/58c3gh

[x]

Well, since someone was actually interested, the master document is

www.nv.doe.gov/library/publications/historical/DOENV_209_REV15.pdf

complete with maps, & government reported distances. And the atomic veterans history project has some nuggets.

http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/news.htm

My old man worked in the Nevada test site in the 60's.

[Owen Lystrup]

Amazing post, Chris.

There definitely is something eerie about looking at old footage of nuclear testing.

The same goes for the footage that exists of the Chernobyl fallout. Amazing how much temerity and ignorance surfaces when dealing with a nuclear crisis.

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