Fire in the sky

Today on Boing Boing I saw this photo:

It’s a photo from Los Angeles, taken in the middle of the night in 1955. As you can see, the light is quite bright for the middle of the night. The cause? The US government was conducting nuclear test explosions in Nevada, probably at least 200 miles away. These photos, which are contained at the LA Public Library photo database, show clearly that the night sky was lit up to daylight levels.

Very interesting that this comes up in the wake of North Korea’s recent missile testing. The present US government is up in arms (ha) about this, when North Korea is just doing something that the US government did many times over, 50 years ago. And North Korea aren’t even exploding nuclear warheads on their own soil.

Funny what retrospect will do to you. Nowadays, anyone paying attention would be horrified if the US government were exploding nukes in Nevada. But at the time, it was seen as a necessary thing. It makes me wonder what the present US government is doing that will be seen in a similar way 50 years hence….

One thought on “Fire in the sky”

  1. It is my hope that most of what the US Government is doing today will be looked back at with the same shameful disdain that we use when looking back at the internment camps that we created for Americans of Japanese descent in the last century.

    In other words, it is my hope that we come to our senses and survive the ramifications of the current adminstration and the next few who will also be able to wield the new found (un-Constitutional) expanded exectutive priviledges conpletely counter to and detrimental to Liberty. – Michael

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