Atomic Toad Downwinder #1 Traditional Cache

This is the first in my series of Downwinder Caches is in honor of the victims of the Nevada nuclear testing, some I knew personally. The term downwinder refer to those that lived "downwind" of the atomic tests such as one of my mother's best friend who lived in the nearby town of Caineville and died from thyroid cancer.

On 27 January 1951, a one-kiloton bomb was dropped from an airplane and detonated over Frenchman Flat marking the beginning of atmospheric nuclear testing in Nevada. Utah Residents could read about detonations in statewide daily newspapers, but the local paper was more likely to describe civil defense preparedness, and most people were more concerned about the threat of nuclear attack from Russia. As elsewhere, children practiced bomb drills at school and residents began building bomb shelters and storing food so it would not become contaminated. Their preperations were to no avail since the greatest threat crept unseen from the west. Tests were usually conducted when the wind was blowing east or northeast in order to avoid fallout over more densely populated areas to the south and west, including Las Vegas and southern California. 

Radiation can damage the DNA in the cells of living things, and damaged DNA can make the cells mutate as in the speciman of this geocache.