Surviving downwind — Mary Dickson's play blasts nuclear testing

When "downwinders" comes up in a conversation, many — if not most — probably think it applies only to a small corner of southwestern Utah, not far from the drifting, poisonous dust that came from four decades of nuclear testing across the border in the Nevada desert.

But Mary Dickson, a well-known Utah journalist and writer, has a deeply personal perspective on the deadly aftermath of the testing. And now, she's put her experiences — originally part of an as-yet-to-be-finished book — into a "docudrama"-style play.

"Exposed," which Plan-B Theatre Company is staging as a world premiere next week in the Studio Theatre of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, is comprised of Dickson's well-documented findings, which show that what the U.S. government first saw as an experiment that would have little or no effect on the few inhabitants in southwest Utah actually impacted thousands across a much wider area.

"The winds didn't stop at a chain-link fence or at county or state borders," Dickson told the Deseret Morning News, during an interview with her, the play's director and the two actresses playing both Mary and her late sister, Ann.

Delving into formerly classified government documents, Dickson is providing a dramatic new dimension to what one New York Times journalist called "the most prodigiously reckless program of human experimentation in U.S. history."

"We believed our government when they told us, 'There is no danger,"' Dickson said.

While the focus of Plan-B's drama is Mary and her sister — both of whom suffered from the consequences of the fallout — Dickson's play also brings in dozens of additional characters, including real-life government officials and composites of other figures.

When Mary refers to herself and her sister as "downwinders," you just assume they must have lived somewhere down around St. George. But they were actually among more than 54 people who got sick or died from fallout-related illnesses but live within a relatively small five-block Salt Lake neighborhood.

During the interview, Dickson said there are also many "downwind" victims who lived in Los Angeles. The deadly fallout was trapped between layers of L.A.'s infamous inversions.

A dramatic map shows that the spread of the fallout takes in almost the entire United States, including large portions of Idaho and Montana.