Hundreds of Cold War-era nuclear tests have left a trail of death across the country.
by Mary Dickson, The Progressive
As Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer painstakingly demonstrates, after witnessing the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, J. Robert Oppenheimer, knew the destructive force he had helped to unleash with the Trinity Test in 1945. Almost eighty years later, Americans and people across the globe are still living with the devastating consequences.
The film has been criticized for not including what came after Trinity, but fortunately it is generating a long overdue dialogue about the test’s aftermath—not just the arms race it triggered, but the millions of innocent people around the world, including my family and I, whose lives have been shattered by nuclear weapons production and testing.

As audiences leave theaters, I want them to think about this: the explosion at Trinity was only the first nuclear bomb detonated on American soil. From 1951 to 1992 during the Cold War, the United States detonated 928 nuclear bombs in the deserts of Nevada, just sixty-five miles from Las Vegas. Hundreds were many times more powerful than those that leveled Hiroshima and 100 were detonated in the open air, spreading radioactive fallout across the entire nation and beyond. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) knew when it moved testing to Nevada that the prevailing winds in the United States would blow eastward and carry fallout with them, but it went ahead with testing there anyway. They hid the truth from the public for decades opting instead for the “judicious handling of public information.” The landmark federal case Allen v. United States concluded in 1984 that the government’s negligence harmed and killed its own citizens.
Recent Posts
‘Shameful Assault on Human Rights’: Trump Sanctions Palestinian Orgs That Called for UN to Investigate Israeli War Crimes
September 6, 2025
Take Action Now The former executive director of Human Rights Watch said Trump’s “answer to Israeli atrocities is to censor reporting on…
Hegseth Doesn’t Rule Out Regime Change In Venezuela, Suggests More U.S. Strikes On Boats Are Coming
September 5, 2025
Take Action Now When asked if the goal was regime change in Venezuela, Hegseth said that was a “presidential decision” and added that “we’re prepared…
Secretary Kennedy Doesn’t Care About Long COVID Patients
September 5, 2025
Take Action Now Reckless funding cuts have dealt a significant blow to ongoing research, derailing NIH-funded clinical trials on antivirals and…
Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic
September 4, 2025
Take Action Now The Many Ways Bombs Can KillBy Joshua Frank, Tom Dispatch A week after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, a large explosion…