My wife's dad saw one of those up close. It was an experiment to see how ordinary soldiers handled a nearby nuclear blast.
The guys who were especially contaminated got an extra scrubbing in the field showers.
Life didn't turn out well for some of them. My wife's father seems to have escaped any harm. Some were unlucky, some were lucky. I'm sure all of them were in the military to defend our nation, not to be treated like lab rats.
There's still enough radiation at the site that anyone needing access is escorted by radiation safety specialists.
It's sorta interesting to wander around the test site using the sattelite view of google maps. There are some very big holes there. But most of the radiation was released by above ground tests which didn't leave such obvious marks.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Nevada+Test+Site&vps=3&jsv=155c&sll=38.440682,-120.737&sspn=0.721743,1.234589&ie=UTF8&latlng=37116667,-116050000,1584018135392101053&ei=G8XvSYSTKYHmiwPVg_n7AQ&cd=1