Quote:Twelve years after the cataclysmic Trinity test, it became obvious to western governments that things were getting completely out of control, with a 1957 British Medical Research Council report stating that global “deaths from lung cancer have more than doubled during the period 1945 to 1955”, though no explanation was offered. During the same ten-year period, cancer deaths in the immediate proximity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki went up threefold. By the end of official atmospheric testing in 1963, the incidence of lung cancer in the Pacific Islands had increased fivefold since 1945. Having screwed your environment completely for 50,000 years, it was time for “big government” to start taking heavy diversionary action.

Quote:There are more than a million lethal doses per kilogram, meaning that your governments have contaminated your atmosphere with more than 715,000,000,000 [715 Billion] such doses, enough to cause lung or skin cancer 117 times in every man, woman and child on earth.

Quote:Many people ask exactly how it is that those smoking mice were protected from deadly radioactive particles, and even more are asking why real figures nowadays are showing far more non-smokers dying from lung cancer than smokers. Professor Sterling of the Simon Fraser University in Canada is perhaps closest to the truth, where he uses research papers to reason that smoking promotes the formation of a thin mucous layer in the lungs, "which forms a protective layer stopping any cancer-carrying particles from entering the lung tissue."

This is probably as close as we can get to the truth at present, and it does make perfect scientific sense. Deadly radioactive particles inhaled by a smoker would initially be trapped by the mucous layer, and then be ejected from the body before they could enter the tissue.

All of this may be a bit depressing for non-smokers, but there are probably one or two things you can do to minimize the risks as far as possible. Rather than shy away from smokers in your local pub or club, get as close as you can and breathe in their expensive second-hand smoke. Go on, don't be shy, suck in a few giant breaths. Or perhaps you could smoke one cigarette or small cigar after each meal, just three a day to build up a thin boundary mucous layer. If you cannot or will not do either of the above, consider phoning Michael Jackson to ask for a spare surgical mask!

Quote:In 1953, the year before production started, the US Atomic Energy Commission had tested 11 nuclear weapons at Yucca Flats in Nevada - including two exceptionally “dirty” above ground tests with high degrees of fallout. After each detonation, huge clouds of radioactive dust were blown into the atmosphere before floating downwind and accumulating in the funnel of Snow Canyon, 220km to the west. Or more precisely, exactly where The Conqueror would be shot in 1954.

Despite this knowledge – Wayne even invited his sons onto the set to see the radiation spikes on a Geiger counter – this is where the cast and crew would be located for the film’s entire production. Thirteen weeks of breathing in the dust and drinking from local streams. And then some: in the belated interests of ‘authenticity’, Howard Hughes later paid for 60 tons of the radioactive dirt to be shipped back to the RKO studio lot in Hollywood for reshoots.

The consequences were terrifying. By 1980, 91 of the 220 cast and crew had been diagnosed with cancer. Forty-six then died of it, including John Wayne, Dick Powell and every leading supporting cast member. Pedro Armendáriz would also be diagnosed, but committed suicide after hearing the news, shortly after filming From Russia With Love in 1963. Numerous American Indians who served as Mongolian warriors contracted cancer in later years, and even John Wayne’s son Michael died in 2003 of cancer, after visiting his father on the set at age 22.

Investigations since have questioned whether the Snow Canyon radiation was wholly to blame – instead arguing that the heavy smoking habits of the cast (John Wayne smoked five packs a day) could have been equally responsible. Even so, the idea that Wayne, the living embodiment of US superpatriot militarism, could have died as a result of military testing is ironic to say the least. Commenting in a People Magazine article on the deaths in 1980, a spokesman from the Pentagon Defense Nuclear Agency was moved to say: “Please, God, don’t let us have killed John Wayne.”

Quote:Hollywood and the downwinders still grapple with nuclear fallout

The US turned swathes of desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it, bequeathing a medical mystery that still haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities and raises the question: how much do you trust the government?

Quote:The photograph shows John Wayne with his two sons during a break in filming on the set of The Conqueror, a big budget blockbuster about Genghis Khan shot in the Utah desert in 1954. It was one of Hollywood’s most famous mis-castings. The duke could do many things but playing a 13th century Mongol warlord was not one of them. Film geeks consider it one of the great turkeys of Hollywood’s golden age.

There is another, darker reason it endures in film lore. The photograph hints at it. Wayne clutches a black metal box while another man appears to adjust the controls. Wayne’s two teenage sons, Patrick and Michael, gaze at it, clearly intrigued, perhaps a bit anxious. The actor himself appears relaxed, leaning on Patrick, his hat at a jaunty angle. The box, which rests on a patch of scrub, looks unremarkable. It is in fact a Geiger counter.
It is said to have crackled so loudly Wayne thought it was broken. Moving it to different clumps of rock and sand produced the same result. The star, by all accounts, shrugged it off.

The government had detonated atomic bombs at a test site in Nevada but that was more than a hundred miles away. Officials said the canyons and dunes around St George, a remote, dusty town where the film was shooting, was completely safe.
Last week, half a century later, Rebecca Barlow, a nurse practitioner at theRadiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP), which operates from the Dixie Regional Medical Center in St George, now a prosperous little city with an airport, leafed through her patient records. “More than 60% of this year’s patients are new,” she said. “Mostly breast and thyroid, also some leukaemia, colon, lung.”

This is a story about cancer. About how the United States turned swathes of the desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it, bequeathing a medical mystery which to this day haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities and raises a thorny question: how much should you trust the government?
“It’s gone into our DNA,” said Michelle Thomas, 63, an outspoken advocate for the so-called downwinders, the name given to the tens of thousands exposed to fallout. “I’ve lost count of the friends I’ve buried. I’m not patriotic. My government lied to me.”

Quote:I don't know if the science behind this holds up, but I feel somewhat vindicated even if it's slightly true.

ANYTHING!