White Ash Over Paradise: Project 4.1’s Human Fallout Experiment

In 1954, a nuclear cloud drifted over a Pacific paradise — and instead of evacuating the islanders, the U.S. government studied them.

This episode of Unsettled: The Hidden Record investigates Project 4.1, the codename for a secret U.S. military medical program that tracked radiation exposure in the Marshall Islands after the massive Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test. The bomb’s fallout reached inhabited islands 100 miles away, coating villagers in white ash.

What followed was not just humanitarian aid — it was data collection. Blood samples, photographs, and health monitoring continued for years, often without consent or full understanding. Many believe the people of Rongelap and Utirik were used as human test subjects in a living radiation experiment.

This is not a theory. This is a documented chapter in U.S. nuclear history — one buried beneath scientific language, geopolitical rationales, and generations of suffering.