Survival Town

Setting: Survival Town, Nevada. Sixty miles north of Las Vegas
Date: May 5, 1955
     It was a clear, early morning. Looking out, it seemed like a perfect town; Tidy houses and electrical substations were visible and homes' pantries were well-stocked with typical canned and packaged foods, like any other American home. But there was no bustling of breakfast being prepared, no yawns of children rising for school, no purr of automobile engines. In fact, there was no sound at all. The residents had been petrified, although not from fear. They were mannequins.
     Survival Town was built by the United States government in order to evaluate explosions' effects on people and buildings. It was a part of the covert Operation Teapot, which aimed to establish an effective strategic method of dispensing deadly A-bombs.

A mannequin before...

...and after. He would've been burned alive

Mannequins were dressed like people and placed in varying areas of exposure - outside, inside, in a vehicle, and so on. If the clothes were burned by the blast, it meant that a human would have been burned alive. The bomb, named Apple-2, was dropped shortly thereafter.

     Though it is apparent today that these tests caused cancer and distress to those living near the sites, they were deemed necessary at the time to "fight the Communists". The fear of hostile takeover by the Russians only fueled the "rampant...McCarthyism" (Williams 929), which began when Senator Joseph McCarthy ran around the government accusing various officials of being "loyalty risks" to national security.

     This was in a time where the Atomic Energy Commission assured nearby residents that radiation levels were "only slightly more than normal radiation which you experience day in and day out wherever you may live". Dead sheep were a common sight, and the rabbits fled.
     So, consider this: The Cold War wound up not requiring nuclear weapons (or, for the most part, violence), so why do we insist upon keeping a multi-billion dollar stockpile today? What are we so afraid of? -MC

Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/sep/21/building-the-atom-bomb-the-full-story-of-the-nevada-test-site
http://time.com/3675016/nevada-a-bomb-test/
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/joseph-mccarthy