The
detonations took place at the
nuclear test site in southern Nevada, where between 1951 and 1992 the U.S. government set off 828 underground
nuclear tests and 100 atmospheric ones, whose mushroom clouds were seen
from Las Vegas, 100 kilometers away.
In a paper published online this week by the journal Quaternary International, 26 members of the working group point roughly to 1950 as the starting point, indicated by a variety of markers, including the global spread of carbon isotopes
from nuclear weapon
detonations starting in 1945 and the mass production and disposal of plastics.