Containment Breach: Americas Long History of Radioactive MismanagementJoshua Krause If this all sounds a little familiar, youre not suffering from deja vu. Last February the same facility suffered a similar breach that ended up contaminating 21 workers. I would at least commend Los Alamos efforts to move these substances to a safer facility, if it werent for the fact that the facility and its surrounding area is littered with oil wells: As early as our government began using nuclear materials, theyve given it all the respect of a plaything. From the end of World War Two until the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963, numerous nuclear detonations in the Nevada desert and Pacific Ocean wrecked the environment and contaminated untold numbers of people. The fallout from the Nevada Test Site may have killed thousands of Americans across the Western United States. But the dangers didnt end with the test ban treaty. At Lawrence Livermore Lab in California, they continue to fire off components of Americas nuclear arsenal. The famed Site 300 where most of these experiments take place, is loaded with depleted uranium (which has been used with reckless abandon in Americas wars) and tritium. Mind you, this area is surrounded by the densely populated Bay Area, and the contamination has been known to find its way into the ground water and surrounding neighborhoods. At least these cases were due to accidents or negligence. They pale in comparison to cases of deliberate radioactive exposure to U.S. citizens. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans have been used as guinea pigs during nuclear testing. They even forced U.S. troops to stand unprotected, beneath a nuclear air burst to take pictures of the blast. In one of the most horrific examples of nuclear testing, government scientists fed and injected unsuspecting hospital patients with plutonium, many of whom were there for routine procedures. While many say the government didnt know the dangers at the time, if you have the stomach to read some of the accounts from the survivors, its obvious that those scientists running the experiments were the most vile and absolutely wicked people in the governments employ. So, unfortunately, none of the news coming from Los Alamos is really that surprising. Our governments negligence and cruelty has become tiresome and par for the course. The United States has shown time and again, that it does not care about the health of its citizens. At its worst, it has repeatedly treated us like lab rats and cockroaches. Dont ever take your eyes off of this dangerous system, lest you become a victim of its carelessness. Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshuas reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. 