Downwind

A documentary about nuclear fallout in the United States, specifically members of the Shoshone Nation whose sacred land continues to be cordoned off as a nuclear test site.

When testing a new technology, one might realistically think that its creators should be able to evaluate its effectiveness after a reasonable number of evaluations, such as, say, several dozen trial runs. But, if that’s genuinely the case, then why did it take American nuclear weapons developers 928 tests to do figure out that their devices indeed worked? That’s not an unreasonable question, but it’s one of many such issues raised in this often-shocking documentary from directors Douglas Brian Miller and Mark Shapiro. According to the film, between 1951 and 1992, the US government detonated 100 aboveground and 828 underground nuclear weapons at the Nevada Nuclear Testing Grounds, with fallout from these blasts spreading downwind from the detonation site (and not just in the immediate vicinity). This relentless onslaught of tests thus earned the US the dubious distinction of having experienced the heaviest bombardment of atomic devices on the planet. This weapons research subsequently affected a wide range of the population, from resident Native Americans to Hollywood movie crews working in nearby desert filming locales to average citizens far removed from the site of the explosions, nearly all of whom were disparagingly and uncaringly looked upon as expendable “for the sake of national security.” The resulting widespread environmental damage and devastating public health effects are still being felt to this day, ramifications that are likely to be around for many, many years to come. And, to add insult to injury, through a carefully orchestrated campaign of propaganda and disinformation, the public has been misled for decades regarding the severity of this calamity. The film details all of these issues, both on the macro level and in a variety of personal case studies, through a variety of recent interviews and a wealth of archive material (including a number of now-laughable government-sponsored films), all narrated by actor Martin Sheen. While the contents of a few of this documentary’s segments could have been a little better organized, the magnitude of these troubling revelations is quite astounding, particularly in terms of how much this story has been downplayed and the extent of lies that have been systemically perpetrated over the years. And don’t become complacent in thinking that this is all in the past: The film reveals that present-day proponents of this type of testing would like to see the current moratorium against them ended in favor of a new round of experiments. And, if that’s not unsettling enough to get our attention, I don’t know what is. Do watch this.