Surviving Nuclear Testing

They might have informed you before exploding a bomb even more grotesquely powerful than the ones that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they never told you the full story.

Maybe they said your homeland was already "deserted", “remote” or “uninhabited.” Or maybe they forced you to leave or convinced you to go. Maybe they made false promises of what your displacement would bring and lies about when you could return.

Perhaps they gave you some equipment to bear the explosion, although it was never enough. Perhaps they gave you nothing at all.

Maybe you saw the explosion through the bones in your fingers, tasted it through dirt blown into your mouth, felt the vibrating earth from far away or inhaled radiation-laced air. Maybe you’ve heard about it in the stories passed down through generations.

For the governments testing nuclear weapons, the test explosion finished just after it began in a blinding flash of light and terrible cloud of radioactive wind and debris. But communities impacted by the tests cannot soon forget them.

Life is a waiting game, not if you and your loved ones will get sick, but when.

Even those born decades after the detonations have ended are not spared.

Nuclear weapons have disrupted communities' health and wellbeing even beyond the physical illnesses that plague them. The decimation of the environment and natural food sources means that entire populations have been forced to abandon traditional food sources and survive on a nutrient deficient diet.

Surviving nuclear testing is a trauma that communities continue to bear, persistent as a cancer.

But survivors are not easily quieted. In spite of the lack of information, recognition and ongoing harms of nuclear weapons testing, survivors advocate for justice for their communities, for recognition, compensation and efforts to address lasting harms. 

Survivors succeeded in establishing the first international treaty to require assistance to communities impacted by nuclear weapons use and testing and a start towards remediation of contaminated areas. In 2017, 122 countries voted at the UN to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Articles 6 and 7 of this treaty create a framework of solidarity to assist survivors of nuclear weapons use and testing and begin to remediate contaminated environments. In 2022, survivors from around the world participated in the treaty's first meeting of all countries that have joined it, resulting a robust Action Plan to take forward these obligations and make a plan for their full implementation.