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Twelve Thousand Bombs: Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium with Tina Cordova
Tuesday, October 1 , 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm CDT
The Twelve Thousand Bombs seminar series on nuclear weapons will continue this fall with four eminent scholars and public figures speaking at ISU. The series, sponsored by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, was inaugurated in 2023 and aims to raise awareness of nuclear weapons issues in the Bloomington-Normal community.
“Nuclear weapons will be on everyone’s radar this election cycle as Americans assess the fitness of the candidates to exercise the president’s nuclear authority,” according to Dr. Matt Caplan, the series organizer and professor in the ISU physics department. “With the U.S. preparing to spend $1.5 trillion modernizing its arsenal, nuclear weapons policy may be a defining feature of the next president’s administration. This is not an issue that can be overlooked this election.”
Tina Cordova—President of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium
Before attacking Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons in August 1945, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon in New Mexico. The radioactive fallout from this test and others in the Nevada Test Site drifted east, exposing Americans to harmful levels of radioactive fallout, resulting in cancers and decades of harm. Today, some 80 years after later, the Downwinders still fight for justice.
