Did you know that from 1945-1962 the United States conducted over 200 atmospheric nuclear tests? We’re talking tests that involved mushroom cloud type bombs that look like the photo above. Yes, over 200. Up until today the films of these tests have been classified. Above-ground nuke testing was banned in 1963, but there are thousands of films from those tests that have just been rotting in secret vaults around the country.
Weapon physicist Greg Spriggs of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has made it his personal mission to preserve these films. Over the course of the last 5 years 4,200 films have been scanned and 750 have been declassified. Already over 64 films were uploaded to Youtube today. You can check them all out below:
“You can smell vinegar when you open the cans, which is one of the byproducts of the decomposition process of these films,” Spriggs said in a statement to Gizmodo.
“We know that these films are on the brink of decomposing to the point where they’ll become useless,” said Spriggs. “The data that we’re collecting now must be preserved in a digital form because no matter how well you treat the films, no matter how well you preserve or store them, they will decompose. They’re made out of organic material, and organic material decomposes. So this is it. We got to this project just in time to save the data.”
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