Three miles to the north, at Area 9, the Army would be conducting hundreds of tests during and immediately after the explosion. Seventy Chester White pigs wearing military uniforms were enclosed in cages facing the bomb and placed a short distance from ground zero. The pigs had been anesthetized to counter the pain of the beta radiation burns they were certain to receive. Using the pigs, the Army wanted to determine which fabrics best withstood an atomic bomb blast. Farther back, lying in trenches, were one hundred soldiers, all of whom were participating in twenty-four scientific experiments. In classified papers obtained by the author, scientists called this the Indoctrination Project. A committee called the Committee on Human Resources was conducting these secret tests on soldiers to determine how they would react psychologically when nuclear bombs started going off. The Committee on Human Resources wanted to study the “psychology of panic” and thereby develop “emotional engineering programs” for soldiers for future use.
A second battalion of 2,100 troops was stationed farther back, in Area 4 and Area 7, troops whose job was to simulate a “mythical attack by an aggressor force against Las Vegas, conducted over four days.” A mile to the south, twenty-five hundred Marines would be working on combined air-ground exercises during Hood, using an amphibian tractor called the LVTP5, the ship-to-shore vehicle that was used in the Pacific during World War II, an “armored monster capable of bringing Marines ashore with dry feet.” Dozens of helicopters performed maneuvers as well. Medical divisions were present, tasked with studying “blast biology,” to determine the primary and secondary effects of flying bricks, timber, and glass. Different types of wood houses had been built to see what could withstand a nuclear blast best: wood or wallboard; masonry or metal; asbestos-shingle or tar-paper roof. The Federal Civilian Defense Administration was testing different types of bomb shelters and underground domes. One structure was ninety feet by ninety feet across and had a reinforced door weighing a hundred tons that was mounted on a monorail. The Mosler Safe Company sponsored and paid for a $500,000 nuclear-bombproof steel vault, ideal for insurance companies and banks seeking ways to mitigate loss after a nuclear attack.
Richard Mingus was at the control point when the Hood bomb went off, all seventy-four kilotons of it. Almost immediately after the bomb detonated, a call came in from Mingus’s boss, a man by the name of Sergeant May. There was a major security problem, May was told. The Atomic Energy Commission had forgotten to secure Area 51. May needed to send Mingus over to the evacuated CIA facility immediately. “Once Sergeant May got off the phone he turned to me quick and said, ‘Go to rad safe, check out a Geiger counter and get over to Building 23 fast.’” Mingus followed orders. He jumped into his Atomic Energy Commission truck and raced toward Building 23.
Not only the yield size of Hood was classified; so was the fact that despite the Atomic Energy Commission’s assurance that it was not testing thermonuclear bombs, Hood was a thermonuclear bomb test. At seventy-four kilotons, it was six times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and remains in 2011 the largest bomb ever exploded over the continental United States. The flash from the Hood bomb was visible from Canada to Mexico and from eight hundred miles out at sea. “So powerful was the blast that it was felt and seen over most of the Western United States as it lighted up the pre-dawn darkness,” reported the United Press International. It took twenty-five minutes for the nuclear blast wave to reach Los Angeles, 350 miles to the west. “LA Awakened. Flash Seen, Shock Felt Here. Calls Flood Police Switch Board,” headlined the Los Angeles Times. Right around the time the blast reached Los Angeles, Richard Mingus reached Building 23, a solid concrete bunker where radiation safety officers stayed during the explosions. In the distance, Mingus saw that a large swath of the desert was on fire.
“You know about Delta?” the security officer inside Building 23 asked Mingus.
“I’ve worked there many times,” Mingus said.
“Grab another fella and get out there,” the man said. “Find a place with the least amount of radiation and set up a roadblock between the test site and Delta.” The Atomic Energy Commission may have moved Area 51 workers off the test site for the nuclear test, but entire buildings full of classified information remained behind. That the facility was not being physically secured by a guard had been an oversight. Now Richard Mingus was being asked to plug that security hole.