This article is a serious wake up call for those living in certain parts of north central US. You can see how the nuclear tests affected a large area and killed almost 700,000 people. The main point here is the need to research the area very carefully. I covered this topic in a previous article called Maps for Choosing Safe Places to Live.
Excerpt from Daily Mail: Beginning in the 1950s, the US government conducted hundreds of atomic weapons tests at a remote site in Nevada, in efforts to ramp up nuclear capabilities amid building Cold War tensions.
But, nuclear fallout from reckless experiments prior to 1963 had grave and unintended consequences – and, new research reveals they may have been far more extreme than ever suspected.
Above-ground tests on US soil left millions of Americans exposed to ‘tremendous’ amounts of radioactive pollution, which made its way into the environment and the food supply, leading to as many as 695,000 deaths from 1951-1973.
Read more: Daily Mail
Of course there have been other tests, chemical and oil spills from mines, factories, pipelines, etc. Careful research into the risks in your area is important. In the above example, most people apparently died from drinking local milk. You may not be able to find a perfectly pristine area but there’s a good chance you can identify the highest risks and figure out ways to minimize these risks.