US nuclear weapons testing can forever scar a nation.Just ask Marshall Island
53 comments
·November 4, 2025briandw
nradov
I agree that restarting nuclear weapon testing is a bad idea but Russia has already taken that step by conducting several test flights of the 9M730 Burevestnik nuclear powered cruise missile. It isn't a bomb, but flying an unshielded open cycle nuclear engine is in some ways even worse.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-ukraine-nuclear-miss...
teachrdan
I think your point is missing the big picture. The US starting testing again -- even underground -- would likely start other countries testing again, at least some of which would happen aboveground.
WillPostForFood
at least some of which would happen aboveground
No reason to think this is true, All the major powers (US, Russia, China) have extensive underground testing capacity. All the recent powers have only done underground testing (Pakistan, India, North Korea). China was the last country to do an above ground test, in 1980, the 22 tests they've done since then were all underground.
kingkawn
How do we know that underground testing has little consequences if all the sites are national security zones. What we do know is that the underground geology is likely permanently compromised, at least within any meaningful time frame, and all nearby aquifers and other water deposits are poisoned for all intents and purposes into the distant future. These tests are ecological horrors that are unnecessary and destructive.
mothballed
An interesting side effect of the US testing and association with Marshall Islands is that they were offered entry in the compact of free association, allowing Marshalese citizens mostly free travel and work rights to come to the USA and work and reside without a visa. Which offers . And vice versa, US citizen can live and work indefinitely in Majuro without visa.
About as many Marshallese live in USA as on the islands.
foofoo12
From US documentary back in the day: https://youtu.be/wqdRIt1EnkY?si=J3Ntmgyx6P66RpJt&t=217
"The Marshales caught by fallout got 175 wrenchons of radiation. These are fishing people, savages by our standards.
So a cross-section was brought to Chicago for testing. The first was John, the mayor of Rangala Battle. John, as we said, is a savage, but a happy aminable savage."
PeterStuer
This is not US specific. Ask the people of French Polynesia how they feel about French nuclear weapons testing etc.
lawlessone
Are the French restarting testing?
xoxxala
Map of every nuclear explosion (over 2000) since 1945:
joshstrange
The land/water distinction (or lack thereof) could use some work. I spent way too long trying to figure out what I was looking at before I released we were zoomed all the way out and the dark blue was land while the light blue was water.
Reminds me of this scene from Arrested Development https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/28b0326d-cba4-4d26-8c54-977f04b...
Johnny555
This article is in response to Trump's declaration that the USA is starting nuclear weapons testing, the the energy secretary clarified that these are "non-critical" tests, i.e. they are testing the non-nuclear parts of the weapon but will not be causing any nuclear explosions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd26yxxx3lo
"These are not nuclear explosions," Wright told Fox News on Sunday. "These are what we call non-critical explosions."
"Americans near historic test sites such as the Nevada National Security Site have no cause for concern," Wright said. "So you're testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon to make sure they deliver the appropriate geometry, and they set up the nuclear explosion."
Finnucane
We've been doing sub-critical component tests at the NNTS since the end of full-scale testing. So Wright is attempting to make it sound like there won't really be a change of policy, but with these guys who knows. It's not like Il Douche has any clue what he's talking about.
IAmBroom
Even money that they simply set off some M80 on the White House lawn, and tell him that was a nuke test.
ourmandave
Say and do anything they can think of to delay the Epstein bomb from going off.
Joker_vD
How about asking Las Vegas instead? It's pretty close to Nevada Test Site, isn't it?
hvb2
In the sense that there's pictures of the skyline of Las Vegas with the plumes on the background, yes.
IAmBroom
Upwind, which matters a lot. Nebraska is more affected.
otikik
Just ask Hiroshima and Nagasaki
psunavy03
Ask the orders of magnitude more of Americans and Japanese people who weren't slaughtered in a ground invasion. Or starved to death in the mass famines a blockade would have caused. And all their descendants. Sometimes wars require the least shitty of a menu of shitty choices.
null
teachrdan
There is ample data that says Japan was on the verge of surrendering before the US dropped atom bombs on them. If you doubt it, ask yourself why the US rushed to drop a second bomb only three days after the first. It was in our interest to intimidate the USSR before Japan had a chance to surrender.
https://time.com/6297240/atomic-bomb-expert-oppenheimer-inte...
IAmBroom
I have never before seen someone so amply and reliably document their own wrongness.
arwhatever
I don’t see how that link could support your contention any less.
psunavy03
Literally the exact quote of the historian in the article you're linking:
"Any myths about this history you want to debunk or set the record straight on?"
"The big one was that the Japanese were ready to surrender and would have surrendered even if we had not dropped those bombs. I think that is a myth. Oppenheimer seems to have believed that the weapon was used against a country that was about to surrender—as he puts it, essentially defeated. The Japanese were essentially defeated—that’s true. Their fleet had been sunk and their cities had been burned. But they were not ready to surrender."
"Did the bombs lead to the Japanese surrender on Sep. 2?"
"Two atomic bombs forced them to. The dominant reason [the U.S.] used the bomb was to end the war. [The U.S.] thought the only way to end the war was to use these two terrible weapons."
shakow
> only three days after the first
Maybe, just maybe because Japan was so close to surrender that there even was a coup attempt to prevent him from surrendering?
hitarpetar
very simplistic to characterize the decision as a trolley problem. lots of factors went into it, not least of which wanting to scare the USSR into the cold war
vbezhenar
Japan war was ended because of USSR won the war. US slaughtering civilians was just that - slaughter of civilians. They should be ashamed of this war crime for hundreds of years to come.
IAmBroom
Sure. Let's go with that, and assume every historian and member of the Japanese Imperial government consorted to lying about it.
tehjoker
The USSR had just taken Manchuria (Korea) and the US wanted Japan in our pocket and to intimidate the USSR. No need to repeat atrocity apologia. Japan in that era was evil af, kind of like Israel today (but in sheer numbers, Japan killed way more people), but that doesn't mean they should be nuked.
After the US took Japan, we reinstated the emperor, wrote their constitution, and used Japan as an imperial outpost to threaten Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and Russia, which we do to this day. In the case of Korea, we invaded in the 1950s and never left, setting up a puppet state. Okinawans and many Koreans want the US military out of their countries.
This was an acceptable trade to the Japanese elite, because the communists would have removed their monarch in the name of liberty!
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...
kingkawn
Didn’t have to do that either Japan would’ve capitulated. But cute to dredge up old excuses for mass killing.
gregbot
Im not sure Japan would have surrendered. The real question is: why was total surrender the only acceptable outcome to the FDR admin? To the point that mass killing civilians was preferred over a negotiated peace.
shagmin
Could take this a couple different ways. Aren't those cities flourishing today?
voidfunc
Sure but it scarred the Japanese culture permanently.
gregbot
Could you expand on what exactly you mean by “scarring” a culture?
anticodon
It seems young Japanese doesn't even know who bombed their country. US controls most of the world media: they can highlight or hide any fact, or inculcate whatever interpretation.
stronglikedan
the big, obvious distinction is that those weren't tests. "test" implies that what happened to the Marshall Islands should have been prevented.
WillPostForFood
US atmospheric testing ended over 60 years ago. Underground testing doesn't "scar a nation". If nuclear deterrence relies on functional weapons, an underground test every few decades seems prudent. The last test was 1992. This article is fearmongering.
hypeatei
> If nuclear deterrence relies on functional weapons
I don't think it does. No one will mess with you if you merely have one bomb let alone the US which has 5k+ warheads and a triad of delivery mechanisms. Blowing up nuclear bombs anywhere for "testing" purposes is stupid.
WillPostForFood
How do you know they work? We haven't tested one in 33 years. Are you still confident after 50 years? 75 years? We all see the problems with aging physical infrastructure - bridges collapsing, dams failing. If you are relying on nuclear weapons as the primary deterrent to stop major wars, they need to work, and people need to know and believe they work. The cost is negligible.
hypeatei
What does testing one nuke say about the thousands of nukes you have stockpiled? The point is: having a nuclear weapon is already a major deterrent and no one is going to poke your buttons to find out if they work or not. Doing a test detonation doesn't move the needle at all.
> The cost is negligible
Environmentally, not at all neglible. Financially, probably since we fund our military more than anyone else.
Finnucane
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'scar'. Certainly the NNTS looks plenty scarred by the hundreds of subsidence craters left behind by the tests. Only once in a while would there be a leak like the Baneberry test in 1970. And plenty of the folks working in the test area were 'scarred', by radiation sickness, leukemia, etc.
stronglikedan
> This article is fearmongering
of course it is, it's CNN
maxdo
We don’t know what will be done but this is scary . We don’t like it. Content of article behind a paywall
FridayoLeary
That's shocking. Nuclear fallout must have been well understood by the 1950s. Back then people in general were far more ignorant of risks and assessing potential risks then today but they weren't foolish. How could they have been so negligent?
null
Restarting testing is a bad idea. However this is a false equivalence. H-Bombing an island nation isn't the same as testing. Underground testing in the middle of nowhere NM has very little consequence to anyone. Restarting testing is unnecessary and a very bad precedent to set, but The Marshall Islands have nothing to do with it.