"tragic fallout"
"They didnŐt say anything about radiation," says Ludmilla Shakhvorostova, recalling the nuclear tests she watched as a young woman in Dolon, Kazakhstan. The Soviets set off hundreds of blasts at a site just 60 miles upwind, but a map tracing fallout patterns was kept secret. Now 80 percent of the 1.5 million people in the region have weakened immune systems, and cancer and birth defects are rampant. Ludmilla's two sons, born in the 1950's, are profoundly retarded.
