| OCR Text |
Show <NJB> I do. I'll share a story of my grandfather. I mention that he was a rancher. He also worked as a security guard at the test site. And it was quite a surprise when I learned that. But he worked, he would work there during the week and then on the weekends he would return to the six-mile ranch and do work on the ranch on the weekend, and go back and forth between the test site and the ranch. He worked there for several years. The company, if I recall correctly, was called Federal Services. And he worked with them, I'm guessing 4 or 5 or 6 years. He worked his way up and eventually obtained a top-secret security clearance. He said that he was able to go into files and see top-secret information, even on the Soviet Union, and what they had stored, or rather what the records had stored there, on the Soviets. He was also present at many of the detonations that went off, he would often, he said he literally stood on the edge of many of the craters looking down into them to see how deep they were. He described one detonation in which a large structure was built, it resembled a bridge, as the way he described it. It…, in my mind I pictured a bridge something similar to a bridge that might go across the Mississippi River, a very large steel structure. He said the bridge, or the bomb, one of the bombs, was placed literally at the end of one of these bridges. And the workers all went away, they set off the bomb. And he actually watched this bridge structure, what was left of it being thrown, he estimated, a quarter of a mile into the air and landing about a half a mile away. He said what was left of it, in his words, it looked like a pretzel. And I thought wow, that demonstrates a lot of power to lift something that heavy, that high and that far away, and to damage it that much. So that was just, that was one of the stories that he shared. Let me look here and I will find you another story. (Pause…) |