The Atomic Testing Museum

The Atomic Testing Museum

We really weren't going to Las Vegas. We stopped in Carson City to visit a friend who is fighting a battle with colon cancer, and Las Vegas was on the way to the Grand Canyon.

Because of the general decline in discretionary spending, and President Obama's criticisms of companies holding conferences there, Las Vegas and the other Nevada hot spots are in big trouble, so there are some real bargains available on hotel rooms. We stayed at the Carson City Plaza Hotel and Conference Center--and paid about $35 a night for a very nice hotel room. We stayed at the Palace Station in Las Vegas--and paid $55 a night for a really, really nice place--one that I suspect would have been $100 to $130 a night a couple of years ago.

I'm not a gambler, so what is there to do in Las Vegas? Well, there is the Atomic Testing Museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute, which provides a very detailed examination of the history of the nuclear test site nearby. It includes such bizarre items as this picture of a mushroom cloud from an aboveground test rising in the background behind the Pioneer Club, and this prime example of Cold War kitsch, Miss Atomic Bomb, a Vegas showgirl in an appropriate costume. (As my wife described it, "Vegas can make anything tawdry.")

One of the film presentations at the museum was shockingly effective. You walk into the theater--and it's made up to look like a bunker used for observing the tests. And when the film starts, you get quite startled. The earthquake and shockwave were sufficiently realistic that I was soon asking my wife to not break my fingers from squeezing down so hard.

I was pleased to see that the exhibits were careful to portray the bad situation that led to aboveground testing--with the consequent damage it did to the "Downwinders," those Americans who were exposed to radioactive fallout downwind form the nuclear test site. They also didn't shy away from the role that Soviet spies played in helping the Soviet Union get the bomb--which made the continued improvement of U.S. nuclear weapons necessary.

If you are in Las Vegas, you might want to consider visiting.