Originally Posted by
PrivtPilotRadarTech
Funny story about what it would have been like on the receiving end. During the early 70's I was a radar tech stationed on a mountain top just NW of the Golden Gate Bridge. We had a exercise. I was given a stopwatch, a compass, a telephone, and a dosimeter, and told to sit in a foxhole on the edge of the peak with a gorgeous view of the San Francisco Bay Area. There was a phone jack for the phone. I was to scan the scene, and when I saw the flash of a nuke going off, start my stopwatch and use my compass to take a bearing to the mushroom cloud. When I heard the bang I was to note the time interval, and phone in the bearing and time. In the operations building they had a large map of the bay area, with a measuring stick marked in seconds at the speed of sound. They would swing that to the bearing and mark the distance given by the flash/bang interval. The dosimeter was a yellow pen-like thing. You looked thru it like a telescope and you'd see a scale and some indicator of how much radiation you'd been exposed to. I put it in the pocket of my field jacket and forgot to return it, still have it. I laugh to think what it would have been like, an earnest 21 yr old trying to keep track of flash/bang intervals as nukes went off like popcorn popping.
I assume you were in the Marin Headlands? I've spent a couple of afternoons mooching around there, very interesting area. As much as the city itself would have been a target, the Presidio etc, I expect you would have been unable to take your measurements on account of having been reduced to atoms. The Nike missile site is still there, open to visitors. Must be all of a mile from the bridge.