Downwinders: Trust Me! I’m with the government. I'm here to help!

An Ounce

Some things are easily observable in the desert. The unobstructed vistas can stretch out for tens and even hundreds of miles. It can be very tough to guess just how far away – or how close – things can be.
And, whenever there is something going on, dust gets thrown up into the air – you can see it for miles. And the dust cloud is carried downwind. The column of a little dust devil can be visible for miles. The dust from a pick-up driving along a dirt road, a construction site, and even a dirt bike zipping along on a trail miles away – can be seen. You may be so far from the source you have no idea what is kicking stuff up.
Looking out to the rest of the world, it is true that activity kicks up dust, that drifts about until somewhere downwind it again falls to the ground. This happens literally and figuratively. But you can’t always see it.
Everything that happens has an impact on whatever is downwind – downwind in geography, and in time.
A large portion of the New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah deserts were subject to the nuclear fallout that drifted downwind of the ongoing tests. Tests that continued for decades.
Back then, people were assured if they stayed out of the fallout, and brushed it or washed it away, it was perfectly safe. However, specific cancers became much more common throughout those regions in the years that passed after that first, and the subsequent years of testing of nuclear weapons.
Today we know, through formerly classified documents, that the United States Government knew the situation was not at all benign. And that hundreds of thousands of lives of downwinders (Down Winders) had been, and yet will be, impacted.
https://www.nti.org/atomic-pulse/downwind-of-trinity-remembering-the-first-victims-of-the-atomic-bomb/
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-07/collateral-damage-american-civilian-survivors-of-the-1945-trinity-test/
https://www.history.com/news/atomic-bomb-test-victims-new-mexico-downwinders