GooodGrief

Absolutely.

Probably being at J tunnel when it blew out.

I was about a quarter of a mile from the tunnel portal when the detonation went off. I was with a small group of radiation safety oriented people including Cliff Lund, ramatrol, standing outside the pick up truck listening to the count down on the radio.

There is a blast shield door and then gas seal door, both of them huge, tons on concrete and steel, in each tunnel placed there to contain the blast effects.

The idea is that if the blast shield fails, the gas shield door will contain the blast.

Well, this one went overyield and blew down the blast shield door, AND the gas seal door. It popped out like a ping pong ball from one of those ping pong ball guns.

There was, initially a dark dark dark red flame coming out of the tunnel, looked like a huge flamethrower, and then quickly following it there was this black black black smoke. Sorry about the dark dark dark and the black black black , but that is the way I remember it.

We were all scrambling to get back into our pickup trucks and get the H out of there. I remember Cliff , who was about 6'4" and probably 250 pounds, got knocked under his Chevrolet pickup truck by another person racing to get to his truck.

No one was injured, except probably Cliff's pride, no high radiation exposure, no internal deposition of radio-nuclides, no ramifications except for the memory.

I don't think there is any film of that experience. I haven't even been able to find any reference to J tunnels blow out.

There were 3 tunnels in that particular area. K, I , and J. Traveling from south to north.

The biggest atmospheric test I witnessed I was assigned to be the rad safe rep with the news media on news nob. Near both CPS, control points, on a little ridge, we were 20 miles back from ground zero.

The test was not a weapon but a plowshare program, peaceful uses on nuclear power, to determine the maximum cratering effects of a device calculated to be around 250,00 tons of TNT equivalent.

There is a youtube video of this shot. It was called Sedan. I will put it here, duh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssLZ4bUTDYM

I remember giving instructions to the media to put on their goggles, dark enough to look at the sun during an eclipse, and when the count down, my father in law did the count down on the public address system and over the radios,reached 10, before it went to 9-8-7-6-5- etc. they should turn their backs and close their eyes.

I did the same and we could still see the flash. Eyes closed, back turned, goggles on and we could see the flash. It was like when lightening strikes nearby and you are aware of the flash even though you aren't looking at it.

Then you rip off your goggles as quickly as possible, maybe the media didn't, but I did, knowing what to look for, to see the red fire and then the dust as it rose. I think I saw a little red with sedan, but not much.

The next thing is the ground swell. You can see it coming across the desert towards you as it comes. It is like the desert going out of focus in a progressive way as the ground swell approaches. I suppose an analogy would be to drop a rock into a large pond and watch the concentric circles as they move away from where the rock dropped in.

Then when it arrives, the earth moves, like an earthquake, a gentle motion in this case, a swaying motion and then you look back and see this HUGE rising cloud of dust. In this case it rose to probably 5 miles high, and it flattened out at the top and actually looked like an anvil.

The media were packing up quickly and leaving as they saw this cloud of dust rise so high. They were looking up at it, from 20 miles back and their eyes were looking up at about 120 degree angle.

I am hairy chested nut scratcher man, dude.

my lifetime occupational ionizing radiation exposure is around 35 REM.

Very little internal deposition.

I think there is something to hormesis, which theorizes that exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation in an occupational environment, that is, almost daily over a period of years, actually may have a beneficial effect.

Put quite simply, the body is aware of the radiation and makes extra white cells to protect the body, which also protect against all sorts of damage to the body.