Why was the US military just as concerned with the ability to judge the effects of the nuclear bombs on their targets as they were with the military objectives?

Question

anonymous · Answer

Because there were still a lot of unknowns about the effects of radiation at the time. The atomic bomb was a very new weapon and they had some idea of what effects radiation had on the human body, but compared to what we know today, it wasn't really a lot. No one really knew a lot about things like fallout, radiation sickness, or the long-term effects that radiation can cause in human beings on the kind of scale that the bombs delivered.

All this went towards knowing how safe it would be for soldiers to enter the area after a bomb went off. Someone has to occupy that territory.

In some tests, the US did some crazy things like detonate a small nuke miles up in the atmosphere over the heads of volunteers (they lived) to putting soldiers in trenches close to nuclear detonations to gauge their survivability in the years afterwards.

anonymous · Answer

Relevant link: 55 years ago, 6 stood under atomic bomb blast -- on purpose http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/19/12834002-55-years-ago-6-stood-under-atomic-bomb-blast-on-purpose?lite