>This map shows just how many people were exposed to fallout from a single nuclear test:

No it doesn't. That map shows the wind disbursement of detectable fallout over a course of days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Atmospher...

That map shows how exposure was effected.

It notes that today background radiation is increased by 5µSv per year.

xkcd helps us understand it https://xkcd.com/radiation/

So the yearly increased dose from testing... is like getting a dental x-ray, taking a short flight, eating 50 bananas, or spending 4 days in Colorado.

True unless you are doing something to concentrate the radiation, like drinking milk from a backyard cow.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK100835/

A few important facts for the casual observer.

* I-131 has a half life of 8 days

* statistically significant cancer rate increases are only seen when exposure happened under the age of 20

* cancer risk peaked 15 years after exposure

* the 30-year survival rate for related thyroid cancer is 90%

(don't worry about drinking milk these days)

So if you were a kid at the time, it happened to rain in the short time when atmospheric I-131 concentration was high after a test, and you drank a lot of milk... you had a noticeably higher chance of a fairly low risk cancer around 1980. A real risk to be sure, testing was stopped for a reason, but let's not blow it out of proportion or claim millions of people are still at risk.

And don't forget to notice that your risk of dying in a war is drastically lower as a direct result of these weapons. A direct result of their creation has resulted in relative peace unprecedented in the history of human civilization. War between major powers now seems impossible and old fashioned, though unfounded fear of these weapons was used for decades after WWII as an inappropriate game to control populations and fight-out conflicts between states that could no longer actually go to war.

Open air nuke testing surely produced a generation of dairy cow-keeping farm children with impaired thyroid function. You've pointed out the short half-life of I-131 and that fact, combined with the typical processing times for fresh milk, means that the milk city kids drank was not particularly dangerous. However, the time between our cows eating pasture grass and the milk on my cereal was on the order of two days. Low rates of thyroid cancer and the typically excellent outcomes of care for that should not give the impression that the overall impact was inconsequential. Both I and my sibling have unexplained (i.e. no positive antibody tests) hypothyroidism. Also, I had a super-low draft number for Vietnam, so all of that testing didn't really lower my risk of dying in a war, right?

Vietnam was peanuts compared to WWII, and what nukes did was eliminate the possibility of major wars between advanced states. If nukes were developed at different times, the worldwide war outcomes could have been much much much worse.

It's peanuts unless your particular butt is in a foxhole, then any war is the same.

The most serious fallout damage from a US test was Castle Bravo[1], which had a yield roughly triple the predicted yield, so the damage from fallout was much worse than they had originally predicted. Most of the other tests did not cause significant increases to cancer risk for all but those very close to the tests

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo#Fallout

While true, that doesn't account for the many millions of older people who were exposed to much higher levels of radiation closer to the tests. Many of whom will die of cancers caused by that higher level of exposure.

Contamination from nuclear weapons is not a binary thing. Basically the worst form of contamination is your breathe air with radioactive particles or eat veggies growing in radioactively contaminated soil. Depending on your level of exposure the effects vary widely so pretending cancer is very likely is not really true.

There is a qualitative difference between stepping on a land mine and maybe--possibly!--having a higher chance of getting cancer.

The lesson we can learn from the poisoned battlefields of WWI can be applied as a counter-argument to anyone saying we should nuke something - consider not only the short term implications of the nuke, but the long term effect on local and global environments.

And on the flip side... they didn't have nukes, so they used all that artillery.

s/nukes/tanks

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but the tank was invented in WWI.

s/tanks/mines

But both issues relate to death or injury within a larger population. The chance of getting killed by most risks is very small, but the magnitude of the impact is obviously massive. The end result (death) is the same.

It is reasonable to feel aggrieved about risk you have not consented to simply because it is an injustice. Perhaps the injustice won't be visited upon me in particular but that is not the point.

The only difference is how easy it is to aim the blame. Thousands of people are dying either way.

There follow on health effects from nuclear testing on the continental USA are negligible.

You're more at risk getting an x-ray at the dentists office.

Source?

Also, why specify the continental US? Is irresponsible offshore testing somehow okay?

You can look up your own source. If you have to ask the question then you're not familiar with the subject.

A small distance away from 'ground zero' of the nuclear test sites there is basically zero difference in background radiation from elsewhere in the US in 2016.

Here's some data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/11/10/the-h...

This is from Norway - they were close to the very large and frankly unsafe tests the Russians did. It claims some health-hazard, but then admit that the effective exposure of the population from all that testing was the equivalent of 2 medical x-rays. Not entirely benign, but not a massive health hazard either - and this is back in the 1950's right after the testing was done.

The lingering effects from nuclear testing in SE USA are really, really small and from a health perspective, completely irrelevant.

An airline pilot will be exposed to significantly more radiation than anyone living near the test sites.

I mentioned 'continental testing' because most testing in the US is not 'high yield'. The tests they did out in the Pacific were orders of magnitude greater, and there are almost zero health effects for anyone but the surrounding animals, granted the effects on sea life is not immaterial.

In the grand scheme of things, nuclear tests are a non-starter in terms of public health. Nothing has come of it.

Nuclear energy is a little bit of a different story, but even there there is a lot of hysteria and misinformation.

> If you have to ask the question then you're not familiar with the subject.

Well, yes, obviously. That's why I asked.

> This is from Norway - they were close to the very large and frankly unsafe tests the Russians did. It claims some health-hazard, but then admit that the effective exposure of the population from all that testing was the equivalent of 2 medical x-rays.

That is such a misrepresentation that you are basically lying. The article says the effective exposure was equivalent to sixty X-ray mammograms, or two whole-body CT scans. A single CT scan has an estimated 1/2000 chance of causing a fatal cancer[1], a reasonable risk if it's used to diagnose a much more dangerous existing condition. The population of Norway in 1956 was 3,460,000--that means ~3,500 deaths from the equivalent of two unnecessary CT scans, in Norway alone.

Additionally, from your article, "Exposure to nuclear radiation during months three and four of pregnancy [due to fallout over Norway, 1956-1966] was associated with reduced educational attainment, high school completion, and adult earnings. Such exposures were also associated with reduced IQ scores among boys at 18 years of age. A one standard deviation increase in ground exposure reduced high school completion by about 1 percentage-point among men, and by about 2 percentage points among women."

> The tests they did out in the Pacific were orders of magnitude greater, and there are almost zero health effects for anyone but the surrounding animals

This is also a complete lie. Read any account of Castle Bravo alone, and the radiation poisoning and birth defects inflicted on the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, which the US government covered up for decades.

[1] http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/diagnosis-staging/ct-scan...

You are clearly and intentionally being misleading. I'm kind of embarrassed for you.

> The exposure of the Norwegians was 2 medical xrays

A whole body CT scan delivers way significantly more radiation than a typical "medical xrays".

"The authors cite estimates that Norwegians in the hardest-hit areas were exposed to an annual radiation dose equivalent to about twice the dose one would receive from a whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan, and about 60 times the external dose from an X-ray mammogram."

Come on. That's not the same as getting an X Ray for a broken bone. This is a 1/1000 chance of fatal cancer directly from the radiation exposure.

Spare me your outrage. You used deliberately vague language to make a dangerous procedure used only in cases of pressing need sound like something safe and routine. This is playground lawyer stuff. You're not fooling anyone.

> Norwegian exposure was well within regular medical norms = fact.

No, now you're straight-up lying again. Norwegian exposure was double that of a dangerous and uncommon medical procedure.

And then you're completely ignoring my point about the Castle Bravo disaster and cover-up, and deploying argument-by-distraction. (Car crash deaths are bad! Therefore, cancer deaths don't matter!)

Let's get back to the original point. You said: "follow on health effects from nuclear testing on the continental USA are negligible. You're more at risk getting an x-ray at the dentists office." I clearly can't trust your unsourced statements on this subject, so I really would like to see a credible source, please.

> If you have to ask the question then you're not familiar with the subject.

If think of exposure to radio isotopes in terms of 'chest x-rays' you need to study more.

"having the world taken over by a ruthless Empire that has invaded an occupied dozens of nations, and actively overthrowing states to install vassal dictators?"

Wait, isn't this still happening or are you referring to the Soviet Union?

But his point, modern warfare saving us from the unfathomable horrors of the World Wars, is well worth even the true cost of the fallout from the nuclear testing.

If we're considering the potential cost of wars that didn't happen, we also need to consider the possibility for the Cold War to have escalated into nuclear Armageddon.

Quite certainly true. The ultimate and most insane gamble... which appears to have paid off, for now?