Was the 1940's nuclear trinity test bad for human health?

google 'john wayne fallout'

>>8355975
>Among the cast and crew who filmed the 1956 film The Conqueror on location near St. George, Utah, 91 developed some form of cancer at various times, including stars Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. The film was shot in southwestern Utah, east of and generally downwind from the site of recent U.S. Government nuclear weapons tests in southeastern Nevada. Many contend that radioactive fallout from these tests contaminated the film location and poisoned the film crew working there.

>>8356735
>Winds routinely carried the fallout of these tests directly through St. George and southern Utah. Marked increases in cancers, such as leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers, were reported from the mid-1950s through 1980.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site

So that's a yes, then.

Could this be the root cause of the cancer boom of the 20th century? People spent too much time blaming irrelevant factors like cigarettes or power lines.

File: bomb.jpg (200KB, 930x768px) Image search: [Google]

200KB, 930x768px

Louis Slotin with said gadget bomb.

Slightly relevant, but interesting read:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/demon-core-the-strange-death-of-louis-slotin

>>8356743
>cancer boom of the 20th century
Around this time antibiotics became more available and bacterial infection, once a common cause of death, got under control. Life expectancy increased ti the point that cancer and cardiovascular illnesses became more important causes of death.

Also the industrialisation after the war brought with it uninhibited use of asbestos and solvents and wealth allowed people to kill themselves with tobacco.

Radiation is probably an insignificant part of this.

>>8356743

No. The root cause is people not dying from other shit.

>>8356743
Exceedingly unlikely. Fallout dosage for the general population was extremely minor; the vast majority of the planet's population did not live downwind of nuclear test sites.

The primary cause of the cancer boom of the 20th century is generally agreed to be antibiotics and other medical advances that reduced the rate at which people died due to not-cancer. Unless medical science cracks mortality, people are going to have to die of *something*, and the older they get the more likely it is to be cancer.

File: Nukes.png (154KB, 540x358px) Image search: [Google]

154KB, 540x358px

>>8356743

A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945 - by Isao Hashimoto

www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, 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 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

>root cause of the cancer boom of the 20th century?

Yes, and of the coming centuries as well.

>>8356759
>tobacco

But smoking doesn't cause cancer though.

>>8356771
The video is paced too slowly.

>>8356757
Fucking demon core, man.
>hey guys let's make a criticality test
>okay cool how do we do it?
>we'll lower the top dome down onto the core to see how much criticality we can get
>lower it?
>yeah dude
>what if we drop it? shouldn't we raise the lower half instead ?
>naw dude it's fine come on

i watched a documentary that claimed that in the 80's and early 90's the government was worried about Cattle getting irradiated from old tests but needed a way to test them without causing the public to panic about radioactive beef. The doc claims that they outfitted a bunch of helicopters with strobe lights and sent special forces operatives out in them in the dead of night to fly over herds and dissect the animals right in the open. Apparently that's where the rumors of alien cattle mutilation come from: the government wanted people to think it was Aliens.

>>8356766
>The primary cause of the cancer boom of the 20th century is generally agreed to be antibiotics and other medical advances that reduced the rate at which people died due to not-cancer. Unless medical science cracks mortality, people are going to have to die of *something*, and the older they get the more likely it is to be cancer.

What about all of the people who died in their thirties and forties due to cancer?

Also 91 people who worked on that John Wayne movie all got various cancers due to the wind carrying the radiation from Nevada to Utah.

john wayne smoked six packs a day.

go try that and see how swell you feel

>>8356818
seems like a great way to get a federal agent shot by a farm boy hick and his lever action .30-06 methinks

>>8357998
What evidence is there that more young people are dying of cancer than in the past?

>>8355960
are alpha, beta particles, ionizing electromagnetic radiation and heavy metals bad for human health?

spoiler alert: yes

>>8356771
For fuck's sake, for what purpose? What fruits did any of this yield?

File: image.jpg (732KB, 1252x1643px) Image search: [Google]

732KB, 1252x1643px

>>8358009
See >>8356743 >>8356735
>among the cast and crew of 220 people, 91 were sickened with some form of cancer

Also here's him in his 60's, pretty sure it's a pre-cancer photo. He doesn't look that bad. Also, correlation =/= causation. plenty of people can smoke until they're eighty five or ninety.

Sounds like it had far more to do with the nuclear test. Smoking is an easy target to blame for disease these days.

Also, thought this was interesting:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(film)
>but the federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health.

>>8358172
>correlation =/= causation
except, according to you, if there's a nuclear test involved

>>8358180
Alright, well I'll rephrase: correlation doesn't always imply causation, but in some cases it can. I'd like to think blaming smoking or alcohol or other usually blamed cancer causes to be a bit too far fetched.

>>8358131
>What fruits did any of this yield?
It was always about potentialities.

You can't just conjure up devices on paper, build them, and expect them to work exactly as intended. You have to test them. There were many surprises in the testing of nuclear weapons.

>>8358934
Smoking causes lung cancer by a rather obvious and easily-observed mechanism of interfering with the mechanisms by which lungs clean themselves.

It also directly delivers radioisotopes into the lungs, because tobacco leaves are sticky and get dust on them, and people use ground-up rocks as mineral fertilizer on tobacco fields. Rock dust generally contains radioisotopes.

The nicotine itself also has various rather obvious general bad effects, like worsening circulation through the whole body, interfering with maintenance processes including cleaning up cancer cells.

>>8359007
>Smoking causes lung cancer by a rather obvious and easily-observed mechanism of interfering with the mechanisms by which lungs clean themselves.

But if it causes people to cough more, and create mucus, wouldn't it actually be causing smokers to expel more particles from the lungs? Ronald Fisher at least thought that inhaling was actually a good thing for smokers.

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/fisher276a.pdf

Also, this study indicates a potential problem if people quit smoking Cold turkey/abruptly.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/oct/16/highereducation.research1

I know this isn't a link to a study, but I can't find the a trial study.

>>8356771
>root cause of the cancer boom of the 20th century?

Why the fuck did I never think about this? Googling yields little relevant info (mostly political and popsci sources), anybody has some informative article on the subject?

>>8359007
This the lung cancer link and even mechanism is so obvious I'm amazed people still dispute it.
>>8359797
It's a meme theory, In my 1911 encyclopaedia the cancer article said that rates were rising even then, it's caused by people living longer

>>8359829
>This the lung cancer link and even mechanism is so obvious I'm amazed people still dispute it.

Then why don't a higher percentage of people who smoke get lung cancer? It's only somewhere around 20 percent of smokers.

>>8356788
It does

>>8359829
People living longer, and exercising less, getting more jobs where they move around less, and eating larger portions of foods that with poorer nutritional value, and fewer fresh foods, right?

>>8360086
"Only" 20% is much higher than the rate of non-smokers even when adjusting for other lifestyle factors smokers are much more likely to get lung cancer.
I know you feel fine and your granddad smoked ten packs a day and lived till 110 but the wealth of evidence indicates smoking causes cancer.

>>8358074
>lever action 30-06
...

File: 18952.jpg (55KB, 600x269px) Image search: [Google]

55KB, 600x269px

>>8360135
Box magazine fed lever actions exist, they're probably not something a farmboy has though.

>>8358131

/x/phile here. Joseph Farrell speculates that they may have been studying yield variances that were due to location. Zero point stuff.

>>8360133
>but the wealth of evidence indicates smoking causes cancer

But that's epidemiological science and statistics, as opposed to hard science. It's far too difficult to tell if someone actually would have lived longer or had not gotten sick had they not smoked.

http://www.tctactics.org/index.php?title=Sound_Bites#Tobacco_is_the_largest_avoidable_cause_of_mortality_in_the_world

>>8360335
>as opposed to hard science
Because it would be unethical to subject people to what would be hard science.
>It's far too difficult to tell if someone actually would have lived longer or had not gotten sick had they not smoked.
Statistically, yes is the answer. Propose some other variable that you don't think is accounted for and would be responsible for such a large discrepancy.
"exposed to fallout" doesn't do it I'm afraid.

>>8360167
/x/ is back the way you came, faggot
>muh zero point energy
you faggots have absolutely no understanding of the concepts that you so happily brandish. if zero-point energy was capable of doing work, all of physics would break down and reality would not be the way it is. ffs go to fucking class or something

>>8355960
nah, nuclear apocalypse is best apocalypse.

>>8360086
People who smoke have vastly higher rates of lung cancer - I think it's something like 30x risk for some types of squamous cell cancer and very high rates for small cell.

Nobody in this thread has posted any evidence that the global rate of cancer is actually increasing, let alone that radiation from nuclear testing is responsible. You people can be pretty damn credulous when it's something you already believe in.

>>8360335
What standard of proof would you accept? Countless epidemiological studies over decades, scores of animal studies - short of randomising people to be smokers or not at birth I don't see how the evidence could be any more convincing.

>>8360529
>epidiemological studies

That's more of a science based on guesswork though.

>animal studies

Many of them showed that the animals were more likely to get cancer if they didn't smoke though.

>>8361008
Found a link discussing some animal studies.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking-studies.html

>>8358103
Simply that life expectancy was shorter back then.

Life expectancy has increased by 1 month per year, recently this has increased by 2 months per year.

>>8356818
It would be infinitely simpler to obtain remains from the abattoirs as samples to test. You could have gotten this under the pretext of checking hygiene.

Too many overdosed on X-Files.

>>8361166
Found more links discussing randomized smoking trials. They found that the disease risk from smoking is far smaller than people think.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/smoking-followup.html

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/what-anti-smoking-evidence.html#more-20868

>>8358114
Of course, but you have to be careful. If you're talking about radioactive material (generally non-gamma), the inverse square law really matters. What matters more is the proximity plus the duration of exposure. You could work with clay pottery all your life, every single day. Or go to one of those black sand beaches every single day of your life and spend 9 hours each time. This makes it far more likely for it to affect your health.

If it's something that you don't deal with daily or even occasionally and not within a relative proximity, it usually doesn't matter and the risks are as negligible as any other health risk, like eating unhealthy food.

>>8361181
>It would be infinitely simpler to obtain remains from the abattoirs as samples to test.
Then you get only the remains of slaughtered cattle.

No samples of cattle that died in the field. Little control of the timing.

When atmospheric nuclear testing was rife, there was massive increases Strontium-90 binding in bones and teeth, which doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate into increased disease.

>>8361177
How does that prove if more young people are dying of cancer?

>>8361166
>http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/animal-smoking-studies.html

Fair enough, happy to concede that I thought the evidence in animals was stronger than that. Perhaps the lifespans of research animals aren't long enough to show an increased risk of cancer (you don't see much in a human after two or three years) - although there is certainly evidence for most of the precancerous changes in animal studies (epithelial hyperplasia etc).

However the author writes that '[the] review author works for a tobacco firm', and goes on to describe how tobacco companies sponsored animal research which suggested there wasn't a link.

>>8362301
>http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/smoking-followup.html
With all due respect, this guy is cherry-picking studies and by the sounds of it hasn't even read more than the abstracts. Most of these studies weren't even designed to evaluate the relative risk of lung cancer in smokers and non-smokers.


COPD (ie emphysema) is probably responsible for more mortality and burden of disease than cancer anyway.

>>8362764
Eh I don't think that's a reasonable conclusion. If you want to demonstrate increased disease, then you need to actually demonstrate increased disease rather than pointing to a scary sounding surrogate indicator and 'imagining' the link into existence...

>>8362803

Right so are you implying that a population infested with radioactive fallout would suffer no increases in illness?

>>8356771

First, awesome vidya, even though it's SCARY PROPAGANDA.

Second, no, even all this didn't cause a global epidemic of cancer. We can, and have, measured exactly how much radiation this added to the already existing background radiation world wide, and it was negligible.

Let me say it again: All those scary, scary bombs didn't do shit to the total dose we soak in all day every day for our whole lives:

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

Note the chart:

Average annual dose is right at 3 millisieverts, the PEAK dose we ever suffered from nuclear tests was back in 1963 at 0.11 millisieverts and these days it's down to .005 millisieverts.

So, we raised our dose by about .16 percent.

Yawn.

Go back to sleep kiddies, everything is fine, you have not found the secret cause of cancer.

Notice how much dose we give ourselves in the USA as medicine, though. Puts things into perspective, yes?

Corollary: Nuclear wars aren't nearly as bad as you think they are. Which is a bit...nerve-wracking, because they're plenty bad enough.

Addendum: Nuclear power is also not nearly as bad as you think. Who knew!

>>8358131
>What fruits did any of this yield?


We live right now in the most peaceful age in the history of mankind, ever. There are untold billions alive and prospering due to this peace.

America purchased this peace by nuking ourselves five hundred times more than we nuked Japan.

You're welcome.

They only let civilians visit the trinity site on 2 days of every year.

You tell me.

>>8362801
>However the author writes that '[the] review author works for a tobacco firm', and goes on to describe how tobacco companies sponsored animal research which suggested there wasn't a link.

I don't see how that's relevant. What ultimately matters is the quality of the research.

>With all due respect, this guy is cherry-picking studies and by the sounds of it hasn't even read more than the abstracts. Most of these studies weren't even designed to evaluate the relative risk of lung cancer in smokers and non-smokers.

But these trials did look at risk factors and mortality for these groups. the fourth study in particular looked compelling.

>COPD (ie emphysema) is probably responsible for more mortality and burden of disease than cancer anyway.

COPD is also constantly found in nonsmokers as well though.

>>8364117
They don't let people settle on nuclear testing grounds, though.

>>8363926
No you strawmanning tard - I'm saying that the fact that something sounds dangerous doesn't mean it is. Unless you think the mercury in vaccines is lethal too?

>>8364905

Wow man talk about being an asshole. :^) Anyway it's pretty clear that having a biologically active radioisotope in the ecology is bad; bad enough for the USA and USSR to shake hands on it at the height of the cold war.

>>8356788
Everything causes cancer in one way or another

>>8365032
Post the evidence from which you arrived at this conclusion.

>>8356803
>ok then, how are we going to lower it?
>I'll just wiggle it with a pen or screwdriver, that will work.

>>8356759
>Radiation is probably an insignificant part
Lrn2probabilly fgt pls

>>8359772
>if it causes people to cough
>if
it either does, or it does not
there is no "if"

File: tobacco-executives-1.jpg (45KB, 450x297px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 450x297px

>>8359829
>people still dispute it
They are parroting what they heard on TeeVee
and read in the news from the paid shills of
Big Tobacco, who swore with hands upraised
that they knew of no negative effects.

>>8356788
>directly breathing in smoke can't be bad
why do people do this, I know you're intelligent enough to put 2 and 2 together so what's stopping you

>>8355960
Well, it sure didn't help.

>>8356788
>particulate matter in smoke
>doesn't cause cancer tho
wat

>>8364030
your background radiation theory misses a critical point. Radiation itself most likely won't kill or harm you unless you ingest the ionizing particle.. This whole background radiation is coming from somewhere. And these particles will eventually be absorbed by somebody/something. You're missing out a lot

>>8365279
Japan has the highest smoking rate, but the smallest number of cancer diagnoses, especially lung cancer. Lung cancer is still the leading cause of death in the U.S. but the smoking rate has dropped well below 20%. Statistically you could easily come to the conclusion that smokers have a very small chance of developing lung cancer. It doesn't help that former smokers are often added to the number of lung cancer patients who smoke, despite them quitting.

>>8365276
>shill

I'm getting tired of this meme. Just because someone is trying to defend a product doesn't make them biased or untrustworthy. It all comes down to the quality of what they're saying. You wouldn't immediately dismiss someone defending against the accusations leveled towards Monsanto, would you?

>>8365757
>leading cause of death

*specifically meant cancer related.

>>8356797
ton once it gets going it isnt

>>8365360
>your background radiation theory misses a critical point. Radiation itself most likely won't kill or harm you unless you ingest the ionizing particle.. This whole background radiation is coming from somewhere. And these particles will eventually be absorbed by somebody/something. You're missing out a lot

This reply is amazing.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

This is so far away from anything relevant, it isn't even wrong. I'd laugh at you, but your belief in the catechisms of your zany religion are actively harmful to humanity.

What you think is fact is not fact, my poor anonymous friend. I'm sorry.

What the hell is going on in this thread?

>Background radiation obviously causes cancer - this is so obvious that clearly no evidence is required.

>Smoking obviously doesn't cause cancer, despite mountains of evidence showing it does.

>>8365762
Yeah, just because someone is being paid to defend something doesn't mean they're biased.

What, what's a shill again?

>>8366691
>mountains of evidence showing it does.

Evidence doesn't mean anything. It's about explaining clearly how a causes b as opposed to using surveys and correlating data. Bad science passes off as 'evidence' all the time. I'm sure people still cite studies saying sex burns calories as "evidence" but it's still bad science.

The original studies linking smoking and conditions like lung cancer have been picked apart constantly by different people.

>>8366927
I really don't know what to say if people just choose to dismiss people as being "shills" without considering their individual argument. The shill gambit is a notable logical fallacy. I don't see the same kind of vitriol leveled towards pharmacists trying to sell drugs.

>>8366691
>mountains of evidence

Eighty percent of lung cancer cases are non smokers.

>>8366691
This is a consistent theme on /sci/. Smoking not causing cancer is also a common topic.

>>8368817
It's the complete opposite. 80% of lung cancer cases are *smokers*. Also, only 15% of the population smokes.

>>8367032
>Evidence doesn't mean anything
...

>/sci/ Science and Math

>>8368836
It doesn't. Anyone can cite a shitty, poorly done study and call it evidence. What matters is the quality of the claims or studies being cited.

>>8365757
Wasn't the smoking rate in Japan much lower for much longer than the USA, though? Current rate is almost irrelevant, since the cancer won't develop for decades.

>>8356743
>Wide tobacco use among producers and casts
>Wayne himself believed his lung cancer to have been a result of his six-packs-a-day cigarette habit

That is one big factor.

Also
>Statistically, however, the odds of developing cancer for men in the U.S. population are 43% and the odds of dying of cancer are 23% (slightly lower in women at 38% and 19%, respectively).[18] Because the primary cast and crew numbered about 220, and a considerable number of cancer cases would be expected, controversy exists as to whether the actual results are attributable to radiation at the nearby nuclear weapons test site.

>>8368833
It's only 80 percent being *smokers* if you lump former smokers with smokers.

If you combine former smokers with nonsmokers, it's 80 percent. Since someone who has smoked at least one hundred cigarettes is considered a smoker the numbers are skewed.

https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/smoking-doesnt-cause-lung-cancer/

The lung cancer rate has also been rising even though the smoking rate has gone down.

https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/smoking-down-lung-cancer-up/

>>8358131
It shows us (USA) bombing the crap out of ourselves to protect the freedoms of the world. It's a lot of cumulative radiation; it doesn't just disappear the next day.

>>8368945
>if you combine former smokers with nonsmokers it's 80 percent

Of nonsmokers getting lung cancer, I mean.