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Nuclear Test Film - Operation Teapot

43 kt · Feb 18, 1955 · Nevada Test Site · 3 Hiroshimas

Operation Teapot (1955, Nevada) ran fourteen shots developing smaller tactical warheads and air-defense weapons. It is best remembered for its civil-effects program, which built and destroyed entire furnished structures to study how American homes and families would fare under atomic attack.

Teapot's effects data was packaged for the public as reassurance. The same blasts that flattened the test houses were sending measurable fallout across the country, a contradiction the Atomic Energy Commission managed through secrecy rather than warning.