No Place to Hide
, David Bradley, 1948

The book is based on the daily log of the author, who was a “radiological monitor” who conducted surveys after two atomic bomb blasts near Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. The front flap of the book says the author was, “Convinced that published reports available to the average man have given him an incomplete and therefore distorted view…(and) lulled him into a false sense of security. Dr. Bradley has interpreted the real truth…The truth constitutes a warning that no man can afford to ignore. It demonstrates that nuclear war has no remedy, and that our only hope is to control the power, that once loosed, will destroy us all.” Several used copies of the book are available on Abebooks.com.

The book has elegant descriptions of the atolls, the ocean, and the array of ships aligned to test the effects of an air burst of an atomic bomb and a subsurface explosion. Able was dropped from the B-29 Dave’s Dream July 1, 1946. The author was in one of the many planes assigned to take radiological readings, but he did not see the initial blast through his tinted goggles. He soon saw the cloud rapidly expanding past 30,000 and then 40,000 feet. His instruments found no radioactivity until the plane came close to the target area. The effects of the blast were less devastating to the armada of ships than had been expected. However, the ships were significantly contaminated, and would remain so despite repeated efforts to decontaminate them absent removal of their surfaces by sand blasting.

Baker was the underwater explosion, and the huge geyser that erupted immediately at the end of the countdown must have been impressive. “Then a huge hemispheric mushroom of vapor appeared like a parachute suddenly opening.” A few ships were sunk, and others were more badly damaged and further contaminated. The third test, Clarke, was canceled, but the monitoring continued. One sailor was cut on the thumb by a contaminated cable. There was consideration of amputation following what the book said had been the policy for the Manhattan Project. The cut was excised, and the man kept his thumb.

I was interested that the “Geiger Men,” which is what the sailors called the radiological monitors, made “radio-graphs” of fish by cutting them in half and placing them on a photographic plate. The process clearly demonstrated the selective absorption of fission products by various tissues. The liver was particularly susceptible. The author worried about the ultimate effect on contaminated fish, their predators, the atolls, equipment including ships, the ocean, the world, and the people of the world. He was especially concerned that “…the Bomb failed to impress more than a few…pessimists with the full scope of its lethal potential.”