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This week, tell us about a time you had to make a gut call.
How'd it go?
Lay out that story in a voicemail at 702-706-TALK.
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Voices from the Storm Remembering Hurricane Katrina.
Now, on with the show.
My great-grandmother and great-grandfather.
They were ranchers in southern New Mexico and they lived there their entire lives, out near the town of Las Cruces.
Tyler Johnson called our voicemail line to share a moment where his family members had an accidental brush with history.
They told us that in 1945 they had gotten in the family car and driven to a town near the border of Arizona.
And they had to stop for the night, so they slept in their car on the side of the road.
Early the next morning, they were awoken by a bright flash.
And that bright flash turned out to be the Trinity test, the first atomic bomb ever tested.
And they just happened to witness it in their car.
It was less than a month after the Trinity test that the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That was the start of the atomic age that continues to this day.
After we got Tyler's message, we looked back in our archive the largest collection of human voices ever gathered to see what other people had to say about living in a world under the shadow of nuclear war.
And we found conversations like this.
When I really became conscious of the Cold War was in eighth grade.
My dad was in the military and he had an office at home.
That's John Conmey telling his kids what it was like growing up near Washington, D.C. in the 60s.
We weren't supposed to be going in the office, but I was very curious.
And on his desk was a classified document, a series of maps where the Soviets, if they bombed us, the targets they were going to hit.
I knew that if an attack came and it would hit Washington DC, there would be about 15 minutes before the first fallout would come.
And I had actually timed how long it would take to run from school all the way home.
Not until I was grown did I feel comfortable talking about the fear I experienced growing up of the Cold War.
People don't understand how close we came and have war broken out.
It would have been catastrophic.
We were at true risk of mankind as a species being annihilated.
It's true, most people don't understand how close we came, but there are some who do.
I grew up in that era, you know, doing nuclear attack drills when you were a kid.
But as an adult, I had to think about, I'm going to end life on this planet as we know it.
I was in the Air Force in explosive ordnance disposal.
One night, I got a phone call from my squadron commander.
He says, Jack, I got a real one for you.
One of the things they did was to issue us all radiation badges designed to measure radiation exposure, which merely cemented to me, as they knew there was a hazard.
And they never, ever told us the results.
Never.
I'm Jasmine Morris.
It's the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.
If you had to make a guess, how many nuclear bombs do you think have been detonated since the Trinity test in 1945?
We've mentioned two already, one at Hiroshima and the other at Nagasaki.
So what do you think?
Five?
A hundred?
Five hundred?
I was shocked to learn it's actually over 2,000.
And more than a thousand of those were on U.S. soil.
These were all tests not just to measure their destructive power, but to also see how the radiation would affect the environment and the people nearby.
Our first story comes from one of those people.
Joel Healy was 17 years old when he joined the army to help pay for college.
Not long after, in 1957, he was assigned to Camp Desert Rock near Las Vegas.
In over four months, he ended up witnessing more than 20 bombs being detonated.
It was called Operation Plumbob, one of the largest nuclear tests ever conducted in this country.
And at StoryCorps, Joel sat down with his daughter Kelly to remember his time in the Nevada desert.
My name is Joel Healy.
I was in the U.S.
Army and I witnessed Operation Plumbob in 1957.
Nevada, USA, this is the valley where the giant mushrooms grow.
More atomic bombs have been exploded on these few hundred square miles of desert than on any other spot on the globe.
Can you describe what it was like to witness your first nuclear explosion?
Well, I was 17 years old, and I thought, if there is a hell on earth, it's got to be that.
You felt the shockwave, the thing going off, and then the heat.
And the biggest one that was sent off in the desert when I was there was a 74 kiloton, almost twice the amount what was used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Little bomb.
Big bomb.
And one of the explosions, I could see the bones in my hands.
When it did go off, where were you physically?
In some cases, we were in a trench.
Other times, we were just standing up out there.
What were you told about safety?
Don't worry.
You will not be in harm's way.
Five military observers stood directly beneath the bursts, indicating the safety to personnel on the ground below.
The Army had their own video teams out there.
So these are our boys whistling Dixie going into a nuclear device.
My only regrets right now are that everybody couldn't have been out here at ground zero with us.
One of the things they did when we first arrived was to issue us all radiation badges designed to measure exposure over a certain period.
I said, what's it for?
He said, none of your business.
I put it on.
Whenever you go into the test site, you will be wearing it.
So that's what we did, and they collected them every two or three weeks, and I issued you a new one.
Once again participated in the detonations to amplify their understanding of the nuclear burst.
They had a motto then, you know, Atoms for Peace.
And, you know, I'm 17 years old and I buy into it.
Because I'm thinking, he spent a lot of money training me to be a soldier.
They wouldn't intentionally put me in harm's way.
And this is 1957.
We dropped those bombs in Japan in 1945.
So they've known for 12 years.
Troops going into battle know that there's a very inherent risk that they may not be coming out unless it's in a black bag.
In this instance, they never said a word, and they knew it.
Just a disgrace.
I don't really like to talk about it.
A lot of good men died.
That's all I have to say.
Joel Healy with his daughter Kelly Healy Salazar, remembering the Operation Plumbob nuclear tests back in 1957.
It's really hard to determine how many veterans became ill from witnessing those tests, but in 1990 Healy and thousands of others received government compensation as part of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
It was part of Joel Healy's job to be in close proximity to nuclear explosions.
And in our next story, a man who was close in a different way.
He had his finger on the button.
Literally.
In 1974, in the thick of the Cold War, Randall Lanning was a missile launch control officer in rural Missouri.
He was 22 years old at the time and for him going to work meant traveling through multiple security checkpoints, then descending in an elevator deep underground into a small room where he worked overnight alongside a commander.
There in that room, he waited by the radio listening for orders to potentially launch nuclear weapons in the event of a Soviet attack.
It was very cramped.
It was dimly lit.
There was a motor generator under the floor, and there was always the whirring noise.
They did provide you a hot plate for making coffee and stuff.
And there was a bed, but you were not allowed to go to sleep.
I would be in sweat socks and sweat pants, like something you'd wear to a gym.
And most of the time it was boring, just absolutely boring.
No radio.
You couldn't even sit down and pop a tape in.
But they had a revolving library of magazines from Time and Newsweek to Playboy and Penthouse.
So that night, we were expecting really a very, very quiet shift.
And out of the blue, we get this warble tone. an alarm that sounds like there's a message coming in.
Tango, Foxtrot, Three, Zulu, X-Ray.
We decode the message and it was kind of an, oh dear, oh my word.
We had practiced this particular message many, many times in the training.
But this was the real thing.
And that meant if we're to this level, then the Soviets have already launched their missiles against us.
So I had to think about, I'm going to end life on this planet as we know it.
Am I personally capable of doing this?
I was a young kid.
I didn't feel like it would ever come down to the point where I would actually have to launch the missiles for real.
So this is big.
We were scared, pardon me, shitless.
So we opened the safe, get the launch keys and the launch code.
And then what really made me nervous was inserting the launch key.
That's when you start thinking like, well, am I ever going to see daylight again?
You know?
So what happened then?
It was probably 10 minutes, but it seemed like 10 hours.
It seemed all day.
And again, another encoded message came through.
And thank God, it was a ratchet down.
Man, them keys and them documents went flying into that safe.
You know, just get it back in the safe.
You know, it was probably my one big war story.
But there was no news report, and most Americans never even knew what happened.
So how did that impact your life?
Why do you think that after 51 years, this story is so vivid in my mind?
Had we launched and the Soviets did the same thing, my mom and dad, who live in Omaha Nebraska, would have gone to bed that night and never woken up.
I mean, you're talking about Armageddon.
You know, if I was sitting in that silo at age 74, what I am now, I'm not sure what I'd do.
When you're younger, you don't think about what are the big implications.
You're training for something you think will probably never happen.
And I hope it never does.
Colonel Randall Lanning with his friend Craig Feaster.
Colonel Lanning served in the U.S.
Air Force for three decades and in all that time he never found out exactly what happened that night.
After a short break, memories from another close call of nuclear proportions.
The night a B-52 bomber crashed in rural North Carolina, carrying incredibly dangerous cargo.
We had weapons aboard, two hydrogen bombs.
I think it was 12 times the power that fell in Nagasaki.
Hiroshima.
That's correct.
Stay with us.
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Trees are essential to the health and wellbeing of communities today and in future generations.
But every year, communities lose 36 million trees due to age, disease, and extreme weather.
Subaru is proud to continue their partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation in the largest corporate community tree distribution program ever.
We'll be right back.
During the height of the Cold War, tensions with the Soviet Union got so bad that, at any given hour, the US military had multiple B-52 bombers in the air, with nuclear bombs on board, just in case of an attack.
One day in January 1961, just after midnight, one of these bombers was flying over rural North Carolina.
18-year-old Billy Reeves had just come home from a late shift at his job as a short order cook and he was about to get into bed when he heard an explosion and saw the B-52 falling from the sky.
It was the most horrific sound I'd ever heard.
And I saw the plane coming down, and it was so bright, like daybreak.
My room was as red as fire.
I ran outside, and I saw it when it hit the ground about a quarter of a mile from my house.
Fire and debris was flying every which way.
Smoke everywhere.
My mother was a devout Christian woman and she was on her knees praying, thinking it was the end of times.
And I run down as close as I could get, and it was so hot, it melted the asphalt on the road.
Right before Billy saw the B-52 go down, the plane had started leaking fuel.
And then, all of a sudden, the wing broke off and the plane, along with two nuclear bombs on board, started losing altitude fast.
One of the three airmen piloting that plane was Captain Adam Maddox.
Years later, at the age of 80, he came to StoryCorps with his wife Annie to remember that night.
It happened so fast.
There was a crack in the wing and the plane was nose-diving.
And I was pinned to the floor as we flew along.
I remember you told me you saw the aircraft commander eject after the copilot.
That's right.
And he looked at you with sad eyes.
Yeah.
He said, I'm sorry, because I didn't have an ejection seat.
So I thought I would go down with the plane.
Well, were you afraid?
No.
No.
I had already given up to die and had already prayed.
So how'd you get out?
All I know, I jumped forward and got pulled out of the plane.
I balled up on a knot so I wouldn't get hit by the tail or the wing or the tips of it.
And I was suspended in space.
I stayed there until I felt myself free, falling and I began to count 1001 1002, 1003 and I pulled my parachute.
I looked down, and I saw that plane hit the ground.
It was fire everywhere, burning pieces past me as I was coming down in my chute.
Where the fire was is where the plane went down.
And it didn't worry me until I saw that I was over the fire.
I prayed again.
And the wind blew me over the fire, over some trees, probably about a mile, a mile and a half.
When I looked down, it was dirt, farmland.
But I hit the ground.
When I had a safe landing, I looked around to see what was around me.
It was a house.
And up there, I saw four people.
When they turned around and looked at me, I told them I wasn't from Mars.
I had just bailed out of that plane.
Three people died in that plane crash and now there were two hydrogen bombs, the most powerful type of nuclear weapon ever created, on the ground in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
As soon as the military learned what was happening, they had to act quickly.
And they did.
That night I got a call from my squadron commander and, instead of using all the code words that we had rehearsed, he says Jack, I got a real one for you.
That's Jack Revell, an Air Force munitions expert, who was sent to find the bombs and make sure they didn't go off.
In the military.
A situation like this, where a nuclear weapon is damaged or lost, is referred to as a broken arrow.
I didn't know what kind of explosive device it was, didn't know how many there were, what the status was.
All I knew is I had a broken arrow, so I knew it was some kind of nuclear or thermonuclear weapon.
Jack was living in Ohio when he got that call, so he jumped into action.
I got dressed and took my pre-packed emergency suitcase.
When I got to the airport, it was a pilot and myself.
That was it.
He says, you must be somebody important.
I've never been cleared to take off before I even got in my aircraft.
So they cleared the runway for you figuratively and literally?
Yes.
That's Jack's daughter Karen, who he recorded with a story core to remember what it was like being in charge of one of the highest stakes jobs imaginable.
You don't often have two hydrogen bombs falling out of aircraft onto U.S. property.
At that point, I'd been in the Air Force about four years.
Just graduated from explosive ordnance disposal school.
It's a little scary when you're that fresh out of school.
Tell me about it.
So you got to the incident site, and what happened next?
Well, they drove me up close to one of the two bombs, and it was held up by the parachute entangled in the branches of the tree.
The weapon was three feet across in diameter and about nine feet long, and it looked like a Washington Monument right in the middle of a bunch of trees.
It's kind of remarkable it didn't land in a more civilized area, like in the middle of a town or something.
It could have.
It was just pure dumb luck.
What the status of the weapons were at that time was unknown.
So we were working in the dark.
Once we determined it was safe to handle, we used the crane to tip it over and put it on the back of a flatbed truck.
So this first bomb is effectively taken care of, right?
Right.
Did they say, oh, by the way, there's another bomb now?
Basically.
But the second bomb.
The parachute had not deployed and this huge multi-ton weapon penetrated the ground at 700 miles an hour and buried itself in the swamp.
You started digging you and your crew.
How many men total did you have with you?
Ten.
We call them the terrible ten.
I knew all of them very well.
But nobody was cracking jokes like they usually did.
That's where I learned to smoke, because of the stress.
As we started digging down trying to find the second bomb.
When we got down to about 20 feet, we hit the water table.
And as you dig the hole deeper, the sides keep pouring in.
The water was up to our ankles and sometimes up to our knees.
And that's why we had to make the thing wider and wider and wider.
Picture an archaeologist and his team, with toothbrushes spoons, sometimes on our hands and knees, trying to figure out what's mud and what's metal.
Mm-hmm.
And the first couple of days there, they didn't even have food for us, nothing.
It was snowing, it was raining, it was frozen.
That's why we worked in shifts.
And we ended up having to work for eight days like that.
And then I was elsewhere in the hole when one of my sergeants says Hey Lieutenant, I found the arm safe switch.
And I said, great.
He says, no, not great.
It's on arm.
We all knew what we were there for and the hazards that we were facing.
So we pulled it up out of the mud very, very carefully and brought it up over this wooden rickety ladder that we had to the surface of the ground in a safe condition.
The next morning I got up and showered and shaved and decided to sit down to write a letter to my folks.
And by the time I'd written, Dear Mom and Dad, my hand was shaking.
I thought to myself, my God, where have I been?
What have I been doing?
You have to understand.
Had one or both of the weapons detonated, you would have created a bay of North Carolina, completely changing the configuration of the east coast of the United States.
And the radiation could have been felt as far north as New York City.
At the time.
In the event of a detonation, the military would very likely blame it on the Russians, rather than admit the fault was in the United States.
And nobody knew it, but it could have easily been the start of another world war.
Jack Revell, speaking with his daughter Karen at StoryCorps in Santa Ana, California.
Details of what happened in 1961 were classified for more than half a century.
It wasn't until then that the people you heard in the story could talk about what happened.
Billy Reeves, the teenager who saw the plane crash, is the only person we interviewed who's still alive.
He's 83 now, and that day is still fresh in his mind.
For years and years when I went to work in Goldsboro, you never went by.
You didn't think about Duvall.
And to this day, when I go there, I look in that field.
Thoughts run through my mind.
We have been blessed by the grace of God not to be blown away.
And I understand part of the bomb is still in the ground to this day.
180 feet underneath that field there's a piece of that bomb they never got to, likely still emitting radioactive energy.
And after all this time, you could almost forget it's there.
But Billy Reeves hasn't.
The military has rights to that land where the plane went down.
They said that the part of the bomb would never bother us, but years to come it could bother the children and grandchildren of people who still live in that area coming up.
Would it be something that would affect them?
Now there has been talk that they were going in to get the rest of it, but if they ever will, it's beyond me.
That's all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast.
We'd love to hear from you, and our voicemail line is always open at 702-706-TALK.
This week, tell us about a time you had to make a gut call.
How did it go?
Leave us that story in a voicemail.
Again, it's 702-706-TALK.
The stories on this episode were produced by Max Youngrice, Michael Garofalo, Esther Honig, Judd Esty Kendall and Mia Warren.
Special thanks to Anita Rao and Yasmina Kwerda, and also to David Robbins at The Mighty Pen Project.
The interviews were facilitated by Stephanie Burton and Kevin Oliver.
This podcast is produced by Max Young Rice.
Our senior producer is Judd Esty Kendall.
Amy Drozdowska is our executive producer.
Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd.
I'm Jasmine Morris.
Thanks for listening.
This podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
