Reviewed by Ace Hoffman February 8, 2025
Under the Cloud describes every U.S. nuclear bomb in detail, along with several other countries' bombs, such as "Joe One" (the American name for the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb). Under the Cloud details where most of the fallout from each bomb probably went (across America for the Nevada Test Site bombs). It describes the psychological games the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) played on the American public to assure them (us) that nothing they were doing was dangerous, when in fact it was very dangerous and the AEC's attitude was callous.
In fact, if the Kodak company in Rochester, New York hadn't complained that the bomb tests were fogging their product, the real damage around the country might NEVER have been made public. In the event, Kodak and similar companies were notified so that they could pause production of film if a radioactive cloud passed overhead (p. 158).
Extremely high levels of radioactivity were routinely ignored, covered up, or explained away as outbreaks of flu, underfed sheep who died of malnutrition (never mind the burn marks on their wool), or poor instrumentation. Public relations was the AEC's only concern.
Under the Cloud includes nearly 100 individual maps showing the fallout patterns across America from specific bombs, as well as a famous (or infamous) map plotting all the known areas of fallout together (see image).
Reading Under the Cloud is an exercise in persistence. The lies, the cover-ups, the distortions, the mistakes...it's hard to believe anyone could be so thoughtless to their fellow citizens, let alone to the whole world and all its living creatures. The U.S. Government very purposefully didn't test to see how contaminated people were and what the epidemiological effects were of the 1051 weapons tests conducted by the United States. Any scientists who questioned the Government lies about radiation was ignored, and their research funding dried up.
But no matter how hard the U.S. Government tried to hide the effects of radiation, it wasn't really possible. As word got out about the conditions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Los Alamos scientists were "horrified" (p. 61). Military Generals wondered how "tactical" nukes would provide an advantage when the radiation would slow down any advance (p. 149). Meanwhile, the public was intentionally kept in the dark and even purposefully confused (p. 180). Scientific reports were altered (p. 186) and radiation levels were routinely declared to be no greater threat than "natural radiation" (p.199). Even when there was obvious harm and studies were proposed, somehow time and again the studies were never done, for example after "Harry" contaminated St. George, Utah (p. 203).
By the late 1950s scientists were recognizing the LNT (Linear, No Threshold) theory of radiation damage -- that "any dose is an overdose" as Dr. John Gofman famously put it (p. 388). However, 1963 was actually the "hottest" year in the United States, due to the feverish pitch of weapons testing the previous two years (p. 353). Throughout the 1960s the AEC held onto the idea that there is a threshold below which radiation is harmless (p. 373). [Even today the idea persists in all U.S. nuclear policies and among its many proponents.]
A chapter on accidents is particularly chilling: Dropped hydrogen bombs where several of the "safety" mechanisms, designed to prevent the bomb going off accidentally had failed -- but thankfully, one worked, preventing a nuclear explosion that might have started World War III.
The names of the guileless bureaucrats who sanctioned the dangerous tests appear throughout the book, as well as the heroes who tried to speak out, some of whom this author was privileged to call a friend and mentor (such as my favorite scientist, Dr. John W. Gofman).
Heavily footnoted and indexed, Under the Cloud is the definitive historic tome of America's nuclear weapons testing program, and includes frank discussions of the two bombs dropped "in anger" on Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After "Joe One" the U.S. Government wanted to know how easily it could detect Soviet nuclear tests by sampling the air. So what did they do? They chemically marked a ton of uranium in powder form, took it up in an airplane, and released it into the atmosphere above the northwestern United States -- thus releasing MORE radioactivity in to the environment in one stroke that was released by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
They just didn't care.
In 2032 a large asteroid known as 2024YR4 might (or might not) crash into earth (current predictions give it a better than 1 in 50 chance of hitting earth). This one asteroid, if it lands on a spent fuel storage installation, will unleash such vast quantities of plutonium and uranium that it could be a life-ending event for ALL large creatures -- including humans.
This risk has never been addressed because the U.S. Government has always considered extremely rare events as being essentially impossible, or at least so extremely unlikely as to be unnecessary to consider in protecting the earth's inhabitants from them.
Yet here we are, facing just such an event.
We are all Under the Cloud.
Review by Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA (images from various sources)
Note: Miller also produced an even more extensive review of America's nuclear tests: The U.S. Atlas of Nuclear Fallout, 1951 - 1970, comprising five volumes (currently out-of-print).
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
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