Science  /  Video

The Atomic Soldiers

How the U.S. government used veterans as atomic guinea pigs.

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Morgan Knibbe’s haunting oral history of the United States’ nuclear weapons testing program in the 1950s and ‘60s. As many as 400,000 American servicemen took part in those tests — experiencing nuclear blasts at close range — and the nightmarish story told by the veterans in Knibbe’s film shows how the experience has marked them for life.