Not to disagree, but I wonder how many of them got cancer or some after effect where no one bothered to make the correlations.

My Grandmother, while in the Canadian Airforce, was subjected to radiation tests(She and others were placed in a bunker during these tests). 60 years later when I look back upon the health problems she went through I can't help but wonder if there was a link. Of course no one, in my family, ever brought it up or even discussed the possibility.

That's the death rate that can be clearly and unambiguously tied to something that happened during a test. The problem is that deaths due to radiation exposure can take place years or decades after that exposure, and the data needed to clearly connect the two is often classified, lost, or was never gathered in the first place. At best, you'll uncover a statistical correlation (e.g., the ten cases of leukemia recorded in later years among the troops who were present at the Smokey shot, where only four would be statistically expected).

Having said that, I suspect that the number of folks who died as a direct result of exposure during tests that they participated in was relatively small, particularly compared to what happened to the folks who lived downwind of the NTS during the atmospheric-testing era. The troops in the Desert Rock exercises were in and out in hours -- but the downwinders lived in fallout contaminated areas for extended periods of time, ate food raised on or grown in contaminated soil, etc. And then there's the cast and crew of The Conquerer...

I remember hearing about "The Conqueror" from my parents:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(film)#Cancer_con...

"Among the 220 or so cast and crew who filmed the 1956 film, The Conqueror, on location near St. George, Utah, ninety-one had come down with cancer, with an unheard of 41 percent morbidity rate, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell. The film was shot in Southwestern Utah, east of and generally downwind from where the U.S. Government had tested nuclear weapons in Southeastern Nevada, and many contend that radioactive fallout from these tests contaminated the film location and poisoned the film crew working there."

I don't know about photographers or famous people but the Pacific Proving Grounds contaminated several islands in the area. Many neighboring residents have higher rates of cancer and birth defects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Proving_Grounds#Remedia...