In early 1951, a few months before I entered the first grade at Larrabee Elementary School, the U.S. embarked on one of the most peculiar and troubling lines of research ever conducted. Sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, in a place known as the Nevada Proving Grounds, scientists began detonating nuclear devices. I first became aware of these blasts when Mrs. Plunk, the rather gruff principle (who ruled Larrabee not unlike General Patton ruled the Third Army) started projecting movie clips from the Nevada test site onto the cafetorium wall. If you were to view this same footage today you'd surely ask, "What were those scientists doing to those poor soldiers?" It's not as if the dangers of radiation were a secret. Certainly not in 1951. And yet, the testing continued.