DOWNWIND
by Karen Pecota

USA | 2022 Directors: Mark Shapiro & Douglas Brian Miller Writers: Warren Etheredge, Mark Shapiro

The chilling documentary DOWNWIND presented at the Slamdance Film Festival 2023, is a call to action from filmmakers Mark Shapiro, Douglas Brian Miller, and Warren Etheredge. Action: you ask? Yes, and more so, in order to demand that the U.S. Government refrain from nuclear testing on American soil.

Right? I know it's hard to believe, but DOWNWIND is the first full feature documentary film giving credence to the enormous amount of factual evidence that innocent American lives, their livestock and protected lands have suffered death and destruction. Many have died pre-maturely of certain cancers at the hands of the U.S. government and the fallout of nuclear testing between 1951--1995. The fallout is still lethally impacting Americans today.

A “Downwinder” is a person who was exposed to radiation from the explosion of nuclear devices at the federal Nevada Test Site. The radioactive materials released by these tests are called “fallout.” Winds carried the fallout particles hundreds of miles away from the test site.

The film gives a historical timeline of events, as well as reasons the U.S. conducted nuclear testing on American soil and not in the ocean first designated to harbor the activity. Due to the expense, land was chosen for the testing site in Nevada and the initial fallout in the 1950s and1960s spread intensely throughout that state, then into Arizona and Utah. Not adhered to was the signed treaty that the land was owned by the Shoshone people, not the U.S. government. No warnings were given of the testing until big booms were heard and sightings of mushroom clouds were visible in the sky.

Shapiro says, "The government knowingly exposed people, what they called, 'low-use' segments of the population--Native Americans and Mormon families--in government documents. These are groups that roll with [things], they don't tend to raise a ruckus."

The Shoshone Native Americans and the Mormon people groups, including their land were the first to be afflicted. Today, the fallout has spread across the United States and collides internationally with the fallout from Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl. The film notes that one particular underground test at the site in Mercury, Nevada, known as "Boxcar," had the equivalent yield of 65 Hiroshima bombs, and U.S. Residents experienced 2.5 times more radiation exposure than those at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

The investigative work from Shapiro and Miller found what is called the Miller Map--a map of the United States showing a more accurate representation of the effect of fallout now across the country (see image on page....).

Shapiro and Miller interview several Downwinders and the devastating health effects they themselves and their communities have suffered due to fallout. A Salt Lake City physician, Dr. Scott, recalls losing family members of his best friend to cancer at an early life. Upon research, it was discovered that the family had been drinking farm milk for years from livestock on land that had high doses of radioactivity.

Ian Zabarte, representative leader of the Western Shoshone people, a community roughly 200 miles due west of Salt Lake City, Utah, shares several tragic examples of the sickness his people have endured from nuclear fallout. His grandfather developed a strange immune disorder causing his skin to fall off.

Claudia Peterson, a St. George medical social worker, lost seven of her immediate family members to cancer, including her daughter Bethany, when she was six years old.

DOWNWIND's narrator, actor and activist Martin Sheen, is a long-time protester against nuclear weapons and other celebrities in the film corroborate. Actor Michael Douglas shares that his father, Kirk Douglas, was interested in his European roots in the 1980s. Born in Belarus, he sought to locate his home village and sadly discovered that it was in the downwind path from Chernobyl, destroying it completely. He championed against nuclear weapons from that time on.

The Utah downwind connection began in the St. George area, in the late 1950s to 1960s, affecting other celebrities including, John Wayne. Roughly forty big production films were made in this location. The extravagant battle scenes, using hundreds of horses and stirring up the sand as well as, loosening fallout particles in the earth from intense horse-back riding was enormous. In 1954, the movie "The Conqueror" under the direction of Dick Powell, starring John Wayne, with co-stars Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead, filmed for five months from April to August.

One year prior to filming, on May 19, 1953, a 32-kiloton nuclear bomb called "Harry" was detonated at Yucca Flat, Nevada--133 miles from the movie set. Due to an unadvised wind forecast, St. George was dusted with some of the highest levels of radioactive fallout ever recorded in United States history. The bomb was later called "Dirty Harry." Two hundred and twenty members of the cast and crew on "The Conqueror" contracted cancer within a ten-to-fifteen year period. One hundred and ten died of cancer, including John Wayne.

Shapiro and Miller present worthy information needing to touch people and ignite one to action, especially civic, political and social leaders of our day. It is necessary for them to care because they will be affected sooner or later. The fallout is real and is growing with every U.S. nuclear test. Keep in mind this number 928. Over a forty-year period, at the U.S. government testing sites, 828 bombs were detonated underground, and 100 bombs were detonated above ground. Comprehend this magnitude. The fallout continues. Are you a Downwinder?