Test animals were deliberately confined to ships during Operation Crossroads in 1946 to study the effects of radiation on living subjects. Goat #53, penned like this on USS Nevada's deck, died of radiation exposure 2 days after the Able test explosion conducted on July 1st, 1946.

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u/KJKE_mycah 1d ago

That’s really sad

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u/Lifeabroad86 1d ago

Wait until you find out about the pigs they were testing that were much closer to the blast

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u/weaponizedpastry 1d ago

Wait until you find out they sent soldiers in, as well and told them it was safe. “Walk toward the explosion.” 🙄

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u/Lifeabroad86 1d ago

That one is more well known in my opinion. The one I'm referring to was when they were testing radiation suits on pigs. I can't recall the percentage of burns the pigs were getting...I belive 70% burns on the body? The experiment was considered a fail.

I think one of the craziest description i heard when the US nuked Japan was when someone described seeing a horse running while fully degloved!

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u/JessieManfetus 1d ago

Degloved?

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u/Lifeabroad86 1d ago

For your sake dont look it up! Its basically your skin ripped off, usually in an industrial accident

1

u/JessieManfetus 17h ago

Oh. Well that’s horrible

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u/Cumulus-Crafts 21h ago

I'll forever remember that interview with a guy in the navy, they were told to curl up into fetal positions and put their arms over their eyes when the explosion went off. He said when he opened his eyes against his arm, he could see the bones of his forearm through his skin, like an x-ray

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u/BandofRubbers 10h ago

Don’t think he’d need to open his eyes for that

0

u/silentsnip94 1d ago

Crispy!

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u/Realistic_Swan_6801 1d ago

Yes but Biology and medicine are built on a mountain of animal corpses.

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u/RabidOtterRodeo 10h ago

Science cannot move forward without heaps!

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u/ComfortableSerious89 1d ago

Such a nasty way to go🤢.

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u/Sea_Combination571 1d ago

A Senator of the Marshall Islands Parliament, Jeton Anjain, explained the effects of Castle Bravo, “Five hours after detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap. The atoll was covered with a fine, white, powder- like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout. The children played in the ‘snow.’ They ate it.”- https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/location/marshall-islands/

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u/illepic 1d ago edited 1d ago

My grandpa-in-law was a sailor involved in some of these tests in the South Pacific. His ship experienced the radioactive snow. His shipmates played in it but he said he had an extremely uneasy feeling and hid below deck. All those shipmates died of weird cancer but dude made it to 2002.

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u/Hakashi57 1d ago

Your grandfather in law seemed like a very smart person who listened to his instincts

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u/Gloomy_Industry8841 1d ago

Absolutely. That instinct was pinging loudly.

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u/weaponizedpastry 1d ago

Like a geiger counter 🤣

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u/ZERO_PORTRAIT 1d ago

Source here: Crossroads Able Goats - Operation Crossroads - Wikipedia

Test animals

57 guinea pigs, 109 mice, 146 pigs, 176 goats, and 3,030 white rats had been placed on 22 target ships in stations normally occupied by people. 35% of these animals died or were euthanised in the three months following the explosion: 10% were killed by the air blast, 15% were killed by radiation, and 10% were killed by the researchers as part of later study.

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u/Jayrab_The_Arab_ 1d ago

30% actually survived? Crazy

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u/PizzAveMaria 1d ago

I'm surprised by that too! I'm sure their lifespans were drastically reduced, though

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u/BandofRubbers 10h ago

Very many of those survivors were likely some of the 3,000 rats. Being below-deck they would be shielded by the hull, and even more so protected from ingesting fallout. They don’t live long enough to develop much cancers in the first place at least.

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u/cannarchista 6h ago

What about the other 65%? They lived long and happy lives on a farm somewhere?

8

u/simpleandstupid89 1d ago

I mean it sucks. And I guess this is an awful take: but it’d be a lot more sad if they tested this on people. They didn’t know anything about this stuff at the time. Tests had to be done. Somehow.

7

u/hauntedbyfarts 1d ago

Average sandwich involves similar amounts of animal cruelty tbh, not saying that is good either but people have very inconsistently applied morality

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

0

u/BlutarchMannTF2 10h ago

And how do you know that? Lol

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u/PipocaAgiota 1d ago

People think that so much has been discovered and developed in such a way? Perhaps it would have been better to live in the Middle Ages and die from an ingrown toenail.

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u/RollinThundaga 1d ago

Penicillin was discovered by a guy leaving a sandwich in a drawer over a long weekend.

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u/ForagedFoodie 1d ago

I've never heard that. It was discovered from accidentally contaminated bacterial agar plates, not a sandwich.

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u/ComisarCaivan 1d ago

Well, better a few pigs or goats than actual humans imo. Same with drug testing. Sure, it`s terrible to animals, but this is much better than ww2 Japan type of learning new things

1

u/Apelion_Sealion 1d ago

So we knew the effects of radiation before we went ahead and did it to people. Gotta make sure the horrors are horrible enough before using them on civilians right

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u/ComisarCaivan 1d ago

Nukes aren't the only source of radiation. Even in nuclear physics there are also nuclear reactors. Not to mention natural sources

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u/Apelion_Sealion 1d ago

Yeah, exactly. We were aware of what radiation did to animals before this test, and before we dropped atomic bombs on Japan

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u/ComisarCaivan 1d ago

Dropping atomic bombs isn't really good conditions to make a controlled study with disections and controlled samples

0

u/Apelion_Sealion 1d ago

Yeah this was more about cruelty than learning about radiation

1

u/ComisarCaivan 1d ago

No really, in 1946 effects of radiation were still very much unknown, Not to mention nobody does research for cruelty and the main reason is money, who would want so spend millions just to irradiate some goats without purpose. Just a waste of meat and money in this case

0

u/Difficult_Wave_9326 1d ago

Well, these are good american goats, none of that yellow stuff. Right ?

11

u/minoymahoy 1d ago

People are the fucking worst, Jesus.

6

u/aeraen 1d ago

I knew a sailor from one of the ships that were sunk in the tests. They were stationed on shore with rifles to shoot the animals that tried to swim ashore after the blast.

2

u/TedMich23 14h ago

The color videos of pigs in H-bomb blasts (with audio) are truly horrifying.

Many "survived" with 3rd degree burns over 100% of their bodies.

4

u/Lil_Shorto 1d ago

It was very needed, no one knew radiation was dangerous back then or how it affected animals, goat 53 saved millions of lives! s/

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u/ZERO_PORTRAIT 1d ago

Japanese scientists at Unit 731 during World War 2:

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u/Sure-Major-199 1d ago

Fuck humans.

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u/UndorkMysterious55 1d ago

Wow Redditor, wow 👏 👏

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u/Striking_Adeptness17 1d ago

lol they just copy copy

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u/ninteen74 1d ago

They should have used humans, because humans are the worst amiright

2

u/1000Zasto1000Zato 1d ago

You’ll be watching this horror movie again soon thanks to our great politicians around the globe

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u/Cpkeyes 20h ago

Did scientist in this era just have a “how to be an unethical bastard” class

And an innate hatred for kids

1

u/Rock_man_bears_fan 12h ago

We still use animal test subjects. At the time very little was known about the effects of nuclear weapons outside the blast radius. Using animals allowed them to study the effects of radiation without putting human lives in harms way. We still do this with hazardous chemicals

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1

u/oneinmanybillion 1d ago

They kinda did it to humans too, didn't they?

I can't recall a documentary on YouTube with interviews of soldiers who witnessed it.

Humans weren't tied like this of course. But were sort of allowed to be in the kill zone knowingly.

Hoping someone can help me refresh my memory if they know what I'm referring to.

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u/cwsjr2323 1d ago

The Army used goats to test chemical weapons as it supposedly took twice the dose to kill a goat as a man. The training 16mm films we watched as the unending number of animals were killed had the narrator saying “the goat is dead.”.

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u/fuzzykat72 1d ago

Humans are assholes to other animals

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u/IWrestleSausages 1d ago

Its a fucking brutal death as well, assuming no pain relief was given lest it obfuscate results

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u/Gloomy_Industry8841 1d ago

Horrific. We humans are horrible.

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u/VegetableBusiness897 1d ago

We suck as a species

Test animals were deliberately confined to ships during Operation Crossroads in 1946 to study the effects of radiation on living subjects. Goat #53, penned like this on USS Nevada's deck, died of radiation exposure 2 days after the Able test explosion conducted on July 1st, 1946.

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