After 73 Years US Government Declassifies Never Before Seen Nuclear Bomb Footage

Blast Off.

Last year the United States Government made a bold move and released highly classified footage from their vault. These films were recorded over the course of 17 years and kept under tight security to avoid prying eyes. The years have not been kind to these film reels and they have begun to decay, so they have been released to the public and are undergoing restoration.

From the barren deserts of New Mexico to the blue waters of Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean over 1,000 nuclear weapons were tested by the United States Government. This was a time when the United States was trying to push its weapon capability beyond the Soviet Union’s in a back and forth arms race.

These weapons did little more than simply suit as experiments for their destructive capabilities and were never actually put into war. The testing of these nuclear bombs contaminated their environments with radioactive fallout and caused skyrocketing cancer rates of people who lived nearby.

There is a lot of talk about the use of nuclear weapons as the United States treads on the tense ground against North Korea. These declassified films still remind us of the capabilities of the United States nuclear program, the destruction it brings and why the testing was discontinued.