Best wishes to everyone for the New Year. Be Safe. Stay Positive. Test negative. Have Hope. Get inspired!
Thank you for your service, support and encouragement as we add to the awareness and recognition for our tribe.
Voices
A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945
Credit: Artist Isao Hashimoto
A beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear tests which took place between 1945 and 1998 (3 min.)
Beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear). Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1952 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.
My Atomic Life : A Cautionary Tale for Future Generations
It blew up early, but I’m forever grateful the military told me upon my first menses at 12 years old that I should plan to never reproduce and why. The Chief, my father, had been repeatedly exposed to ionized radiation in the Pacific Proving Grounds on the U.S.S. Estes from 1951-60, and active with the ship until she decomissioned in . He had been told not to have children, and I was the result of an accident on a three-day pass, but at least I was given a choice that day, a choice my mother never got. Pictures of two headed pigs reinforced their point. Her guilt for my health challenges were monumentally overshadowed by the consequences The Chief and our family would endure.
Over time I’ve learned my story is unique. Most veterans were never allowed to share the information with their spouses, or their children. My 6th grade Sex Education class had nothing on what I was learning about ionized radiation reproductive problems since they started early and not just for me. After a decade of pursuing every other possible option, The Chief’s penis and testicles were removed from the impacts of his exposures as another cancer was added to his growing list.
A kaleidoscope of known (diagnosed cancers) would ravage his body over the next 18 years until it was brain lesions that finally took him. The Navy’s Gold Team at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital tracked, manged and treated him throughout, since he could not tell a civilian physician about the condition of his body, or how it came to be so radiated.
The Q Clearnace “Code of Silence” household I was born into suddenly permeated every aspect of life and created bond of health challenges that at times were hidden from my mother, as the mix of guilt and heartbreak were unimaginable. This vibrant couples life and future became an unspeakable nightmare, literally. My older brother would not know the truth for 40 years, 20 years after his died. He wasn’t in a “Need to Know” position until the R.E.C.A. fund was discovered by me in 2008.
I was informed sometime before 18, “Your body will most likely track with similar cancers to his.” By 21 I was thrust into a civilian medical system, still under clearances not to discuss any of it, and with no health insurance since I had ‘aged out” of dependent coverage. Eleven years of reproductive organ challenges mercifully ended with a full hysterectomy at age 23. At 64, I’m fighting my 3rd round of cancer now, with evidently more to come!
For some of us, the Cold War will never end.