This Should Scare the Crap Out of You

If the thought of half of all guns in the world being in the United States today doesn't give you pause...then maybe this video about the cavalier way that we have treated atomic weapons will. 

I want to give credit where it is due - I was alerted to this by the Restricted Data blog.  As Alex Wellerstein notes, the date on the video is almost certainly wrong since the US was in the middle of a nuclear test moratorium in 1959.  The more likely date seems to be about 1952.   I will leave it to Alex to make his observations, as they are much the same as I would make...plus:

1. What were we thinking?
2. Is it somehow OK to use military personnel as guinea pigs?
3. Did we really believe that ducking down in  a WW I trench would be protective/effective?   (Maybe that explains in itself a lot of the Pentagon's failings since then as well as those asinine "duck and cover" drills I was subjected to during the Cuban Missile Crisis...right in front of the "window wall" that was one side of our classroom).  

 


And just by the way...the US has more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world's nations combined that admit to possessing them, which of course excludes good "friends" like Israel.   This should make me feel better about it...but since we are also the only country that has ever used them in war......