Alumnus lectures on atomic bomb

In spring 1953, 600 people at the site and another 15 million television viewers watched an atomic bomb explode in the Mojave Desert.

UNLV professor Andrew Kirk said scientists coordinated the atomic explosions to demonstrate the eerie effects on a house and the mannequins set up inside it. In the UNM alumnus’ lecture, “Doomtown: Picturing Home on the Nevada Test Site,” Kirk said the test site was thought to be nothing more than an empty space in Nevada, but in reality, hundreds of thousands lived there, including the Paiute and Western Shoshone tribes.

“The West is a complicated place,” Kirk said. “What appeared to be blank spots are full of history. Empty landscapes, supposed waste lands, are loaded with human history of forgotten people and forgotten stories.”
The day of the demonstration, Native American tribes protested at the site’s gate, but the scientists proceeded.

Kirk showed images of a house built 3,500 feet from ground zero. It was filled with furniture, consumer goods and mannequins, which scientists positioned to look like they were performing everyday tasks. At various locations, dummies sat in cars and trucks.

Photographer Vernon Jones captured the blast that depicted the house bending from the nuclear wind force before it was engulfed in flames three seconds later.

Hundreds of dogs, pigs and mice dressed in human clothing were placed at the Nevada Test Site, Kirk said.

Kirk said pigs are anatomically similar to humans, so they made perfect test specimens for the project.

The pigs were strapped to tables at incremental distances and covered in sunscreen to see if it would reduce deadly chemical burns from the blasts. Some animals died immediately, while others lived and were tested over time.

After the tests, unprotected soldiers went to the blast site and rummaged through vehicles, the house and land. Some soldiers suffered immediate effects from the blast, and others endured long-term health problems from the radiation, he said.

Kirk said the project had unintended consequences for Nevada desert inhabitants, many that irreversibly changed their lives. “’Civil effects’ was the euphemism coined by federal defense planners to describe nuclear weapon strikes on civilian targets,” he said.

UNM history professor Virginia Scharff said that Kirk’s presentation was compassionate and sympathetic to all afflicted by the atomic demonstration.

“Whether they were proponents or opponents of the testing, whether they were the workers or ranchers, I thought he really entered imaginatively into their world and had a real sympathy for them,” she said.