Historian seeks survivor stories from the fallout era for Mellon Foundation fellowship project

A renewed oral history effort is collecting stories from residents across rural Utah and Nevada who lived through, or inherited memories from, the era of above-ground nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1962.

The project, called “The Fallout of Fallout Oral History Project,” is led by Dr. Don Unger, a postdoctoral fellow with the Mellon Foundation and the American Conservation Experience, a national nonprofit organization. Unger is working in partnership with the Great Basin National Heritage Area and the Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area.

Winds from the Nevada test site carried radioactive material across wide swaths of rural Utah during more than 100 above-ground detonations, affecting ranching families, schoolchildren and entire communities in ways many residents are still discovering. Sanpete County falls within the fallout zone.

“This is not just a story about cancer or illness or what happened to the people around the test site during the testing years,” Unger said in an interview. “It’s about what communities have done afterward. About resilience, responses and the silence that has attended the uncertainty of not knowing if a loved one’s illnesses were truly caused by the fallout from nuclear testing.”

Unger is an environmental historian and scholar of the American West. He completed his PhD at the University of Arizona in August 2025, where he spent seven years conducting research with the Navajo Nation on the history of uranium mining and reclamation on Diné land.

He grew up near a uranium mill in Durango, Colorado, so the nuclear chapter of American history isn’t academic for him; it’s personal. His most recent article on the politics of uranium mill storage on the Navajo Nation was published in the Journal of Arizona History last month, and he and scholar Sarah Fox (author of “Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West”) are currently co-writing a piece intended for national publication on the Mellon Fellow’s Website, nowandhere.org.

The American Conservation Experience and the two heritage areas hired Unger to serve as the lead historian of “The Fallout of Fallout” project. He joined in fall of 2025 and since then, the team has conducted 45 interviews across the region. Unger personally completed 25 of those. He describes the work as the most meaningful of his career, but also the most urgent.

“We are losing stories every single week with people passing away,” Unger said.

“This may be the last oral history project that can speak to the generation of witnesses to the nuclear tests and that era. No other generation before or after has witnessed this, and these stories will be lost when the last downwinder passes on.”

The project is about more than documenting illness or exposure data. Unger said his goal as a researcher is to look at the full picture: not just what happened to people, but how they responded. How doctors, politicians and local leaders reacted. How communities became, as he put it, “the architects of their own futures.”

As an environmental historian, Unger often begins interviews by asking about childhood. He asks about foods at the dinner table (milk and dairy were a leading cause of radioactive iodine transmission), about work and play habits, time spent outdoors, and recollections of school safety drills such as “duck and cover.”

He’s spoken with retired game wardens, teachers and other oral historians who have worked on earlier downwinder research. What he’s learned from those earlier scholars confirmed what he already suspected: The window is closing fast.

The project welcomes all kinds of memories, not just dramatic ones. Passed-down stories from parents and grandparents matter just as much as firsthand accounts.

“If you are carrying stories that are about your family’s experience with the fallout and the years of nuclear testing, they are important for your heritage and for the next generation,” Unger said.

He added that many people dismiss their own family history as not important enough, but the fallout legacy is deeply embedded in this region’s fabric. “We often take it for granted as something inevitable or something safely in the past. It is not.”

He also pointed out that the effects of fallout aren’t confined to the past. Genetic problems can be passed through generations, and the possibility of resumed nuclear testing in the United States means future generations may need these stories to make their own informed decisions.

Unger described his role as an oral historian not as a collector of stories but as a carrier of them. “A joy shared is twice,…and a sorrow shared is half the sorrow,” he said. “Oral historians are not just storytellers or collectors. We are story carriers, and it is in how we carry those stories that matters to the communities we seek to serve.”

Each interview is recorded only with the participant’s permission, and a consent form is required before anything begins. Every interviewee receives a copy of his or her recording and transcript at no cost.

Excerpts may later be used for educational materials, museum exhibits, curriculum, documentaries or published articles. The project is also commissioning artwork, creating a logo, and exploring ways to formally honor the people who lived through this era. As Unger noted, the workers on the Manhattan Project received pins and hats for their service; “Why not the downwinders?” Unger also encouraged residents to look into the Radiation Exposure

Compensation Act (RECA), a federal law recently reenacted as of July 4, 2025, under what has been called the Big Beautiful Bill. The program pays up to $100,000 to individuals who can prove they or their parents were downwinders. A new Department of Justice website was launched in late January to help people begin the claims process.

Unger cautioned residents to be wary of scams; he said some groups have asked people to donate a percentage of their claim in exchange for help filing. Those operations are not legitimate. Unger assists agencies by supplying claims documents, and he is also working with a team of doctors in Ely, Nevada, to present radiation exposure data.

Separately, Unger noted that the LDS Church has been quietly and internally working for years to conduct similar research and file claims on behalf of its members as a free service. He said he is still learning the full scope of the Church’s role but intends to chronicle it as part of the project’s broader story.

“The Fallout of Fallout” project is scheduled to run through August 2026. Unger, who lives in the Great Basin Region, travels extensively to meet interviewees where they are. Interviews can be arranged in person, by phone or by video conference.

Residents who want to share a story, recommend a family member, or learn more can reach Dr. Don Dooley Unger by email at GBdownwinders@gmail.com or by calling or texting (719) 413-3800.