Word: desertions
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nuclear bombs began exploding in the Nevada desert in 1951, when Sheldon Nisson was five. "They used to tell us to get up and watch the blasts," recalls his mother Helen, who still lives in Washington, Utah, some 125 miles downwind from the test site. "We saw the clouds go over all the time. Our children played outside. All the while, the Government kept saying that it wouldn't hurt us." But when the last of 102 mushroom clouds rose above the desert in 1962, Sheldon Nisson was dead from leukemia. His cancer, along with that of nine other...
...senior drilling inspector at the Department of Energy's Nevada Test Site, Rufus Moore usually pays scant attention to the antinuclear protesters who often appear at the perimeter of the top-secret patch of desert 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The 1,350-sq.-mi. site in the Nellis Range has absorbed hundreds of underground blasts as the U.S. has fine-tuned its nuclear arsenal. For Moore, 54, a cigar-chomping veteran of hundreds of such tests, nuclear deterrence and superpower peace depend on the results. "The minute we stop testing, we're in trouble," he says...
Last Thursday, however, Moore had to thread his car through the largest demonstration ever held at the test site. Nearly 2,000 people rode buses and cars into the desert to protest the first U.S. nuclear explosion of the year $ and the 25th since the Soviet Union unilaterally declared a moratorium on nuclear testing in August 1985. Nye County authorities arrested 438 people, including Astronomer Carl Sagan, Antiwar Activist Daniel Ellsberg, Actor Martin Sheen and Singer Kris Kristofferson, for trespassing on Department of Energy property. Said Sagan of the testing program: "We've built a kind of doomsday machine, which...
...been a meeting point between the West and the Arab world. There is no other place where Israelis and Arabs forget their animosities and party together so heartily. Dahab is also a magnet for skin divers and backpacking bohemians, who are variously drawn to its famous coral reefs, gorgeous desert moonscapes and hashish-induced laid-back vibe...
...reply: "I'm ready when you are, buddy." Bock went through a five-second countdown, then punched a red button on his control panel. With a metallic click a locking device opened, and the X-15 dropped silently on a long, fast, powerless glide toward the desert floor...