[technothrasher]

I went and visited the Trinity site a bunch of years back during the open house day in October. They gave us a little pamphlet at the gate that said there was no radiation danger to worry about. Then we passed signs along the way to the site saying things like, "don't eat, don't drink, don't apply make-up, don't rub your eyes." The mixed messages didn't exactly inspire confidence.

You can see the few little bits of tower legs, what is left of the trinitite on the ground, and are surrounded by the enormous quiet of the empty desert all around you. It definitely felt like a haunted place. Not in the literal "there are ghosts here" way. Similar feeling to what I had at Dachau. Just very uncomfortable to be there.

[jltsiren]

I remember similar warnings from when I visited Chernobyl ~20 years ago. The ambient radiation exposure was not that different from the average flight, but there could be some actual risks if you accidentally ingest radioactive dust.

[iamjs]

I know the Chernobyl fallout had a pretty significant impact on agricultural in the region, but I don't think I've ever heard about anything similar in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, or Colorado. Why not? Surely there is less agricultural activity on the American West than in Eastern Europe, but is that the only reason?

[u8080]

You could check present Cesium-137 levels in mushrooms or forest berries with pretty simple tools to track that btw.

In Russia we used blueberries from certain region(they were openly sold on marketplaces) to calibrate amateur spectrometers(like RadiaCode 101).

[sanktanglia]

as a rockhounder i was recently introduced to the idea that each bomb dropped is given its own name for unique recombinations of matter(trinitite, hiroshimite, etc) and that for a while they let people just collect it and its in circulation in rock shops