I dont know about New Mexico, but I do know about St George in Utah. Basically, everyone got cancer.
At the time the government told everyone that it was totally safe. From 1951 to 1962 the AEC detonated more than 100 bombs that send massive amounts of radioactive dust across the valleys and canyons of southern Utah and norther Arizona. Families would gather at vantage points and watch like it was a fireworks display. Then they'd drive home as the ash fell all over their communities.
In 1953 the AEC dropped a 51 kiloton bomb and a 32 kiloton bomb in the area. It coated St George and other towns in grey ash. Thousands of sheep died soon after but the AEC blamed that on cold weather.
It was a year after this that a movie crew turned up to shoot The Conqueror. That movie you've never seen, but will have heard of because Wayne tries to pass as Asian. And it's as racist looking as it sounds. Theres a picture of Wayne and his sons holding a Geiger counter and apparently the thing was going bat shit. Wayne thought it was broken and slapped it a few times. Howard Huges would later scoop up a lot of soil and take it back to hollywood for reshoots.
Over a hundred thousand people in the area have been affected by the fallout. The Government denied anything was wrong. That the tests hadn't caused any of the issues. But the reality was actually that all that ash, all that fallout, the radioactivity everything. It was everywhere. It was in the air, it was in their food, it was in their water. A study done in 1984 showed that lukemia levels were 5 times higher in the area than anywhere else in the world. And the finding was even more outrageous, because the people there were all mormons. They didn't drink or smoke, at leas not like everywhere else in America.
During the 1980s, lawsuits started and the government denials of any issues or links came crashing down when AEC reports came to light that showed that they had known all along about the cause and the effect. They had downplayed and distorted the facts for decades. In 1990 Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. A fund that was set up for "downwinders" as they called themselves, who got cancer or any serious illness that was linked to above ground testing. The compensation was capped at 50k per person and only includes the first generation of those exposed. Their kids and grandkids are shit out of luck. The fund as dished out over 2 billion dollars since 1990. Theres a clinic in St George that averages 140 new cancer patients every year.
And the worst thing about all of this, is that it only every comes up when people google "how did John Wayne die?".
Since 1945 the US has conducted over 1000 tests. The last was in 1992. The peak was in 1962 when the tested 96 bombs in a single year.
This is part of Oppenheimer's legacy. Of course, if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else. So he shouldn't have felt too bad about it.
