60's Retro: 1960 Cold War Realities

I was just a pup in 1960 and have no real appreciation of the Cold War realities that the world faced at the time. Even a study of the history of that period fails to give a full sense of the risks and perils inherent in the nuclear arms race.

Doomsday Clock

1960 was actually a bit of a lull in the arms race. So much so that the "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" adjusted their "doomsday clock" from 2 minutes to midnight to 7 minutes to midnight in response to the "belief that a new cohesive force has entered the interplay of forces shaping the fate of mankind, and is making the fate of mankind a little less foreboding."

Nuclear Tests

The United States and Soviet Union had even managed to observe a moratorium on nuclear testing for 1959 and 1960. The moratorium would ultimately be broken in 1961 as relations between the superpowers deteriorated and a new and aggressive period of testing would begin.

"Plumbbob"

I find it personally interesting to note the extensive series of nuclear tests conducted under the code name "Plumbbob" at the Nevada Test Site in 1957. Being born in Arkansas in October 1957, I find it noteworthy to consider what was going on back "in the day".

Operation Plumbbob was a series of nuclear tests conducted between May 28 and October 7, 1957, at the Nevada Test Site, following Operation Redwing, and preceding Operation Hardtack I. It was the biggest, longest, and most controversial test series in the continental United States.

The operation was the sixth test series and consisted of 29 explosions…
Almost 1,200 pigs were subjected to bio-medical experiments and blast-effects studies during Operation Plumbbob…
Approximately 18,000 members of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines participated in exercises Desert Rock VII and VIII during Operation Plumbbob…
Plumbbob released 58,300 kilocuries (2.16 EBq) of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere. This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 120 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 32% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests)…
Statistically speaking, this level of exposure would be expected to eventually cause between 11,000 and 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer, leading to between 1,000 and 20,000 deaths.