Some early beginnings....

[maury@webtexas.com (Maurice Siskel)]

Here's a bit of history that will tug on a few heartstrings....

> Post-nuclear ghost town
>
> History radiates from artifacts at Nevada Test Site
>
> By Andy Walton
> CNN Interactive
>
> MERCURY, Nevada -- This was never a town in the conventional sense. It
> had housing for 1,200, a cafeteria, recreational facilities, and a post
> office -- but no local government, and only one employer. But for most
> of the Cold War, Mercury, Nevada -- at the southeast corner of the
> Nevada Test Site -- was bustling.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ipix interactive images
> Get the Plugin
>
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> House
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> Crater
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> Huron
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> Tower
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> Bridge supports
> While most Americans thought about, worried over or waited for the
> unthinkable, the Nevada Test Site held dress rehearsals. It was home to
> 928 nuclear explosions during the years, scattered over an area larger
> than the state of Rhode Island.
>
> The most famous and photogenic blasts here were in the early days. The
> images of devastated mock-ups of houses, test animals seared by
> firestorms and troops charging under a mushroom cloud are among the most
> enduring scenes of the nuclear arms race. All were from the period from
> 1951 to 1962, when bombs were tested in the atmosphere.
>
> When that ended with the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Nevada
> Test Site, or NTS, went underground and continued testing in deep
> tunnels. The explosions pockmarked the desert; even underground tests
> can leave craters. In aerial photographs, the range dubbed Frenchman
> Flat looks like a moonscape.
>
> The underground tests ceased in 1992, after President Bush signed a
> moratorium on underground testing. President Clinton extended the
> moratorium, and U.S. adoption of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
> eventually followed. The area surrounding the gates to the Nevada Test
> Site, where anti-nuclear demonstrators were once a permanent fixture, is
> dead silent.
>
> Ghost town
>
> Though Mercury was only sort of a town, large parts of the test site
> look like a genuine ghost town. Low wooden bleachers that once were
> packed with VIPs during atmospheric tests are warped and grayed by the
> sun and infrequent rain, with brush sprouting under and between the long
> benches.
>
> On Frenchman Flat, about a dozen miles north of Mercury, two frame
> houses built as test subjects for the May 5, 1955, "Apple II" blast sit
> as empty, weathered hulks, the wood scorched bare by the test. Inside,
> the floors are littered with evidence of the site's thriving wildlife
> population, and spent rifle shells testify to past troop exercises in
> the area. A faded radiation warning sign sits face-up in the debris.
>
> Less familiar-looking structures also survived the tests. A concrete
> building with several large bays, open at both ends like a coin-operated
> car wash, was used to test building materials. Most of the walls and
> doors tested on this structure are gone, though some segments of brick
> survive. Around the structure sit free-standing window frames, used to
> test the properties of different types of glass, with some shards of
> glass still evident.
>
> The shattered structures scattered around the site leave the impression
> that Civil Defense planners left little to chance. All manner of
> shelters, from low reinforced-concrete domes to square bunkers and
> underground garages, are in various states of destruction -- almost
> exactly as they were just after the blast. One mock bridge support
> suspended between concrete pilings is tortured out of shape, while less
> durable bridge designs are simply gone. Low pens held pigs, whose skin
> is similar to that of humans, for burn experiments.
>
> The "First National Bank of Frenchman Flat" is a free-standing bank
> vault, its concrete-and-steel outer walls sheared back like the peel of
> a half-eaten banana, the one ton iron door removed after the test. Site
> spokesman Derek Scammell says the contents of the vault (no real
> currency, of course) survived the test.
>
> Irradiated oddities
>
> Some reminders of the site's history are simply surreal. On a centrally
> located hill, a gun turret from a battleship is mounted, its three guns
> replaced by one tube of instruments. During atmospheric tests, the
> turret could point its sensors at the test site and take measurements.
> Now, the turret provides a nest for fiercely territorial birds who have
> an active hostility for intruding reporters.
>
> The "Huron King" chamber was used to test the effects of radiation on
> satellites and other space-based hardware. It sat atop a shaft in a 1980
> "vertical line of sight" experiment, fitted with mechanical closures
> that sealed the pipe before the shockwave could damage the instruments.
> It was then hauled into the desert, where it continues to cool down.
>
> At one test site that never was, a tower full of instruments waits to do
> its job. This was to be the site of an October 1993 underground test,
> canceled by the moratorium. The tower is astride a deep shaft, and the
> generators and other supporting gear on trailers are off to the side.
> All that's missing is a nuclear bomb, or "device" as they're generally
> called.
>
> One of the projects that seems strangest, in hindsight, is the Plowshare
> Program initiated by the Eisenhower-era Atomic Energy Commission.
> Plowshare searched for peaceful uses of nuclear weapons technology,
> taking its name from a passage in the Old Testament book of Isaiah:
> "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
> pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will
> they train for war anymore."
>
> The most striking reminder of Operation Plowshare is the Sedan Crater,
> 1,280 feet across and 320 feet deep. It was an experiment in the use of
> nuclear explosions for excavation, to dig canals or dredge harbors. The
> Sedan test detonated a 104-kiloton device 635 feet underground,
> displacing 12 million tons of earth. Tons of that sand became airborne
> fallout, and the process was deemed unsuitable for digging. Occasional
> Plowshare tests, 35 in all, continued until 1971.
>
> In search of a mission
>
> Back in Mercury, the only missing element from a Central Casting ghost
> town are the tumbleweeds. The movie theater and bowling alley featured
> in old photos are gone. The NTS no longer fields a basketball team. The
> cafeteria, designed to feed a few hundred people at a time, is empty.
> Outside the cafeteria, about 20 newspaper boxes are a reminder of the
> days when breakfast crowds were better. Only a couple contain papers
> today.
>
> Still, according to the Department of Energy, Mercury is the
> second-largest settlement in Nye County. There always seems to be a use
> for a thousand square miles of controlled space. In Area 5 of the site,
> the Hazmat (hazardous materials) training center teaches fire and rescue
> personnel to cope with accidental or intentional chemical threats. NTS
> is courting aircraft companies that need a vast open space where
> experimental aircraft can crash harmlessly. And a painstaking government
> process is looking at Yucca Mountain, on the site's western border, as a
> place to secure nuclear waste for the next 10,000 years, give or take a
> millennium.
>
> Even nuclear testing of a sort goes on. Scientists from Los Alamos
> National Lab in northern New Mexico have conducted five "subcritical"
> tests here, measuring the reaction of nuclear materials to explosions
> that do not trigger a chain reaction. U.S. officials say the tests are
> within the treaty, and that they are necessary to protect the safety of
> the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
>
> Opponents are dubious of those claims, and some still protest outside
> the gates -- if only briefly. In April 1998, one group of protesters
> left after a day as anti-nuclear organizations turned their attention to
> a California nuclear waste dump.
>
> The near-indifference from protesters is another sign that the Nevada
> Test Site, still literally under the desert sun, has seen its figurative
> day in the sun come and go.

--
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to
a fair trial.                                Charles M. Province


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