> The 701st soldiers were guinea pigs for evaluating the bomb’s flash, burn and shock-wave effects under field conditions.
Yet somehow the story is about a hero that disarmed a bomb - not that he had tried to set off and test the effects on almost 1000 soldiers....
A cool customer in more ways than one....
He would most likely have been there with those 1000 soldiers. The tests were intended to put you close enough to see and hear the blast but not close enough to be either scorched or significantly irradiated.
Specifically the tests were aimed at training soldiers on what to expect from a nuclear blast and to see how those soldiers would react.
Presumably if the US (or some other nation) was to drop a bomb in an area with deployed soldiers, they wanted to make sure the soldiers would still be able to perform as expected.
> Presumably if the US (or some other nation) was to drop a bomb in an area with deployed soldiers, they wanted to make sure the soldiers would still be able to perform as expected.
There's other cases to consider:
- the enemy drop bombs near our men
- we drop bombs near enemy men
In each case how the impacted soldiers react would be interesting and somewhat predictive of the other cases.
Of course they aren't close enough to get obliterated - however there are well documented occasions where soldiers were placed so scientists could study the effects of radiation exposure ( among other things ).
Look up Operation Desert Rock.