(no subject)

[camwyn]

About halfway through The Atomic Times I ran across a chapter in which the author was given orders to process. One was a requisition order for new furniture for the colonel's house on Eniwetok, and this was classified, because classified orders got processed faster. The other was an order to cancel the requisition for reinforced protective goggles for the enlisted men to wear during the upcoming Redwing tests. When he asked about this, given that his major had gone into great detail about how important eye safety was and how useful those goggles were, he was told that Important Visitors to the testing site would be staying at the colonel's house and they couldn't have them seeing old, worn out furniture and sleeping on lumpy beds, and that there was only room on the plane for either furniture or goggles, so the enlisted men would just have to not look at the tests, and turn around to face away from the explosion- and probably put an arm over their eyes.

GOD DAMMIT REAL WORLD HISTORY, STOP SOUNDING LIKE YOU WERE WRITTEN BY THE WRITERS OF FALLOUT.

Comments

[bodldops.livejournal.com]

*facepalms so much* What is it about upper management of anything that turns previously sane, reasonable individuals into crazy bad-decision-making monkeys?

[camwyn]

I gotta admit, from what he described of the first test- the little test, comparatively, there's a whole series yet to go- I'm not sure the goggles would've done much good. He had his back to the test and he had his eyes closed and he had his arm over his eyes and he still couldn't see for several seconds afterward. I don't know what the goggles would've been made out of that could've made that kind of thing watchable.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

During lunch I read this post to one of my coworkers. It turns out her late father was also on Eniwetok for those tests! (Ah, the world is so small.) She said his description of it (this may have been one of the bigger, later ones) was that even turned around, eyes closed, arm over his eyes, he could still see a bright flash.

Scary stuff.

[camwyn]

Not necessarily one of the later ones. Harris said that even though he was facing away from the blast and had his arm over his closed eyes it was the light that was blinding him... at the first test, May 5, 1956, code name Lacrosse. They just got infinitely worse after that.

[bodldops.livejournal.com]

... Um.

An entire bolt of blackout fabric? Also doubles as a somewhat portable bed.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Soooo, the googles, they did nothing?

Sorry. It was there. Someone had to say it.

[camwyn]

I think it would be most accurate to say the goggles, they did nothing... IN AMERICA! (Since they never got to Eniwetok, but... well, yeah.)

[duane-kc.livejournal.com]

My mother worked in Civil Defense in the 1960's. Some of the stories she would tell match up well with the Fallout universe; like the co-worker/lover who she believed caused her to miscarry her first pregnancy by slipping a sample of U-238 in her desk drawer...

[ymfaery]

It sounds more like the writers of Fallout did a lot of reading on the atomic age, or are history geeks. :Db

[matt_doyle]

May I link to this post? I know someone who would get a kick out of it.

[camwyn]

Sure, go ahead.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. That's just ridiculously, horribly awful. Of course in retrospect quite possibly it doesn't matter a bit, with the exposure to the radiation, but it just reinforces my opinion that the government and all rich people (because most gov'ts are composed of people who were born rich) basically consider anyone lower on the totem pole to be as disposable as tissue paper. I've seen it in my own job.

[camwyn]

Oh, it gets worse from there, to the point where I found myself thinking that huge stretches of it sounded like exactly the kind of shit that you'd expect from the Soviets or the Chinese towards their soldiers. But, yeah, no; American army, American soldiers.

There's a quote on the front cover calling it "A gripping memoir... leavened with humor... a tribute to the resilience, courage, and patriotism of the American soldier." It's apparently from Dr. Henry Kissinger. I have no idea what book he was reading. I don't think it was this one.