Nicknamed Ivy Mike, the huge eighty-two-ton device was more of a building than a usable nuclear device. The first test of a thermonuclear, or fusion, bomb took place on November 1952 at Enewetak Island. Contaminated with nuclear fallout, one crew member died, and the rest were sickened by radiation. In 1954, the crew of the Japanese fishing boat DaigoВ FukuryuВ MaruВ accidentally sailed through fallout from the nearby fifteen-megaton Castle Bravo test. Others that were near tests were exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive fallout and forced to fleet. The Pacific tests were notable not only for their stunning visuals, the most compelling imagery of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima, but also the forced relocation of native islanders. The second nuclear test, after 1945вЂ™s Trinity Test, took place at Bikini Atoll. The bulk of the remaining nuclear tests took place in Pacific, at the islands of Bikini, Enewetak, Johnson Island and Christmas Island. Today the craters and pockmarks from underground tests are still visible in satellite map imagery. Atmospheric tests could be seen from nearby Las Vegas, sixty-five miles southeast of the Nevada Test site, and even became a tourist drawВ until the Limited Test Ban TreatyВ banned them in 1963. The average yield for these tests was 8.6 kilotons. The NTS hosted 699 nuclear tests, utilizing both above-ground and later underground nuclear devices. nuclear tests occurred in the middle of the Western desert, at the Nevada Test Site.

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