The US government has detonated hundreds upon hundreds of nuclear weapons in secret.
Researchers carried out above-ground blasts from 1945 up until 1963 — when the first nuclear test-ban treaty was signed.
The goals of the tests were straightforward: detonate new bomb designs, measure their explosive power (called yield), and see what might happen to enemies unfortunate enough to be a target.
About 10,000 videos of such tests were filmed, analyzed, and locked away in high-security vaults, where they were nearly forgotten. Most started to decay over the decades.
However, more than 50 years later, a team of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is working day-in and day-out to rescue, scan, and analyze the high-speed films.
“This is it. We got to this project just in time,” Greg Spriggs, a nuclear-weapons physicist at LLNL, said in a video about the digitization effort. “We know that these films are on the brink of decomposing, to the point where they will become useless.”
Over the past five years, Spriggs’ team has scanned 6,500 films and declassified 750 of the never-before-seen videos. Several dozen have been uploaded to YouTube, with more on the way.
“These films are priceless to us,” Spriggs told Business Insider.
Here are some of the highlights from the videos, many of them recorded in the remote deserts of Nevada.
Most of the never-before-seen films released by LLNL are of high-altitude explosions like this one from October 1962.
This test, called “Housatonic,” was one of 31 nuclear explosions in Operation Dominic.
The device was detonated about 12,100 feet (3,700 meters) above the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and yielded a blast of 8.3 megatons — more than 400 times as strong as either of the bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
Sources: “Worldwide Nuclear Explosions” (PDF); LLNL/YouTube
Far off from ground, nuclear blasts make fireballs that initially form a perfect orb. Yet the updraft soon mushrooms each explosion.
Shown here is “Harlem,” a 1.2-megaton blast from June 1962, which was also a part of Operation Dominic.
The bomb was detonated about 13,650 feet (4,160 meters) above Christmas Island, which is located in the Indian Ocean.
Sources: “Worldwide Nuclear Explosions” (PDF); LLNL/YouTube
However, some of the most interesting blasts were filmed at a desert location now called the Nevada National Security Site.
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