Over the course of 17 years, from 1945 to 1962, the US government conducted many atmospheric nuclear tests.
This was all done to gain military superiority during the times of Cold War. Films of these blasts were secret and stored away in high-security vaults.
Now, after 65+ years, the United States has declassified 750 video files for the first time. Conducted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the videos of the tests are now available on YouTube.
LLNL physicist Greg Spriggs is working hard to preserve the 7,000 known films, according to Gizmodo. During the period of last 5 years, about 4,200 videos have been scanned, and 750 have been declassified. The first set of 64 videos is now available on YouTube.
Spriggs predicts that it’ll take about 2 more years to scan all the films and the declassification of remaining 3,480 films will take even longer.
Spriggs also hopes that capturing the history of these explosions might show the force of these mass destruction weapons and how much havoc they can wreak. This way, maybe, people might be reluctant to use them in future.