About & sources

Ground Zero is a curated front end for the declassified U.S. atmospheric nuclear test films held by the Internet Archive. The films — public-domain U.S. government records — have been online for two decades. What was missing was a way to browse them with the context they demand: yields, dates, locations, and the consequences for the people downwind.

The archive currently covers 16 operations and 23 films, spanning 1945–1962.

All footage is streamed directly from the Internet Archive via its embedded player. Nothing is rehosted. If an item moves, its identifier is updated in the dataset.

Yields, dates and locations follow the U.S. Department of Energy's public-domain accounting, United States Nuclear Tests 1945–1992 (DOE/NV-209, Rev. 16), cross-checked against the per-operation historical record.

The aftermath notes draw on the public record of fallout exposure and displacement: the Marshallese of Rongelap and Utirik, the crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, the Nevada and Tularosa Basin downwinders. These films were made to document weapons. They also document what those weapons did to people who never chose to be near them.

Static site, no tracking, no build step beyond a single Node script. Source data and the full reference list live in the repository.