Radioactive Fallout Blanketed Nearly the Entire U.S. in Gov't Nuclear Tests

The public was dosed without consent—and most Americans still have no idea it even happened.

Jun 04, 2025

This article originally appeared on Jon Fleetwood’s Substack and was republished with permission.

Between 1951 and 1962, the U.S. government detonated more than 100 nuclear bombs in the open air—at the Nevada Test Site and elsewhere—releasing radioactive fallout into skies that didn’t respect state lines, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute.

Among the most dangerous byproducts was iodine-131 (I-131), a radioactive isotope that seeks out and embeds itself in the human thyroid gland, particularly in children.

Winds carried the fallout far and wide.

From Nevada to New York, Montana to Mississippi—every corner of the continental U.S. was blanketed.

It wasn’t a localized tragedy.

It was a national exposure event.

Ironically, doctors today intentionally use I-131 to treat patients with certain thyroid conditions, including hyperthyroidism and differentiated thyroid cancer.

What Is Iodine-131, and Why Is It So Dangerous?

Unlike background radiation, I-131 is a manmade, high-risk isotope.

Once released into the environment, it contaminates grass, then cows that eat the grass, then milk that children drink.

It doesn’t take much.

The thyroid is highly sensitive to radioactive iodine, and exposure during childhood dramatically increases the risk of thyroid cancer, autoimmune thyroid disease, and other endocrine system dysfunctions.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Research Council have both acknowledged this.

Their modeling estimates that nearly every American alive during the testing years was exposed to I-131 from fallout—without warning, and without consent.

“[P]eople living in the United States at the time of the testing were exposed to varying levels of radiation,” writes NCI.

Where Did the Fallout Go? Everywhere.

High fallout zones: Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Nevada—states downwind of the Nevada Test Site were the most saturated.
Not spared: Midwest, Northeast, Southeast—all received measurable doses. Rainfall during the fallout events drove radioactive particles into crops, water supplies, and food chains across the nation.
Even Hawaii saw measurable fallout from Pacific tests.

The NCI released maps showing I-131 exposure estimates down to the county level.

Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security (SGS) published research detailing the spread of radioactive fallout from nearly 100 continental U.S. atmospheric nuclear weapon tests.

“A map depicting composite deposition of radioactive material across the contiguous U.S. from the Trinity test in New Mexico and from 93 atmospheric tests in Nevada” (Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security (SGS)).

These maps make one thing clear: everyone was exposed.

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The Cover-Up & the Fallout of That Fallout

The U.S. government didn’t inform the public in real time.

Decades passed before the extent of exposure was acknowledged.

By the time compensation programs were created in the 1990s through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), the damage was already done.

As of 2014, nearly 30,000 claims had been paid to Americans harmed by fallout from the tests.

But even those numbers undercount the full toll.

Recordkeeping from the test era was incomplete.

Dose reconstructions are educated guesses.

Many cases of thyroid cancer and autoimmune illness may never be connected to fallout—because the system wasn’t designed to track them.

Bottom Line

The U.S. government detonated nuclear bombs above ground that released I-131 into the air.
Wind and weather patterns spread that fallout across every U.S. state.
Children who drank contaminated milk or played outside during peak fallout were especially vulnerable.
The federal government has quietly acknowledged the exposures—but only after lawsuits, investigative pressure, and scientific modeling made denial impossible.

And this wasn’t some foreign actor.

This was our own government, exposing its people to radioactive material without disclosure, consent, or adequate warning.

If you’re an American born before 1972, odds are you ingested radioactive iodine—courtesy of your own government.

So the real question isn’t whether the government has exposed U.S. citizens to deadly substances without telling us, but which substances they’re exposing us to today without telling us.