BOMBSHELL DISCOVERY


US government declassifies 750 films of nuclear weapon tests 

Declassified footage shows the US government conducting hundreds of secret nuke tests at the height of the Cold War

Some of the over 6,000 rare clips have been posted online after the original films started to rot

  Pictured is the ‘Nutmeg’ test, detonated on May 22 1958 in the Marshall Islands

THE US government has declassified hundreds of films of nuclear weapon tests conducted between 1945 and 1962.

The chilling videos, shot at the height of the Cold War when the arms race was at its fiercest, have just been shared on YouTube in an attempt to preserve footage found rotting in high security vaults.

 

  

The ‘Nutmeg’ test was one of over 100 conducted by the US government in the Pacific between 1947 and 1962

  

Footage of the above-ground tests have been hidden from the public for years

The American Lawrence Livermore Laboratory conducted 210 nuclear weapons tests across New Mexico, Nevada and both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans between 1945 and 1962.
Its weapon physicist Greg Spriggs and a team of archivists have been hunting down, scanning and declassifying these decomposing films before it is too late.

  

To date, the team has located around 6,500 of the estimated 10,000 films created during atmospheric above-ground testing.
Around 4,200 films have so far been scanned, 400 to 500 have been reanalysed and around 750 have been declassified.
The first release of these clips – taken by several cameras and shooting around 2,400 frames per second – were published online on Wednesday.

Declassified video of nuclear weapons test: Operation Hardtack II - Rushmore 60528

Nuke films

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Operation Plumbbob took place between May 28 and October 7, 1957

They include Operation Plumbbob conducted over the Nevada desert in 1957 - six years before atmospheric testing was banned - which released a huge amount of radiation into the air, raising concerns over its affect on the local population.
It will take another two years to scan the rest of the films and longer to complete analysis and declassification.
It's hoped the release will be used to warn other nations against using the weapons.
Spriggs said: "It's just unbelievable how much energy's released.
"We hope that we would never have to use a nuclear weapon ever again.
"I think that if we capture the history of this and show what the force of these weapons are and how much devastation they can wreak, then maybe people will be reluctant to use them."
The release comes a day after warnings that the US military's new "supernukes'' could push Russia into a "catastrophic pre-emptive strike".
(Culled from The Sun, UK)

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