Yes, it's crazy how much humanity has developed in mere decades.
One needs to understand the times in general. Take 50's. It was just under ten years then since millions of people were slaughtered in world war and nazis scooped people in ovens and gas chambers. Having 18 000 exposed to nuke wouldn't seem so big deal in the context.
Unless someone you were related to was part of that 18,000 of course.
I DO take the 50s into account. I AM also taking the brutality of WWII into account (heck, we helped add to it by dropping two nukes onto two
civilian targets). What I do have a beef with is the fact that we are a nation of laws specified in a constitution WE ALL (military, intelligence and John Doe included) adhere to.
The sheer brutality of the nuclear tests of the 50s, along with the intelligence community's continuous raping of The Sacred Rules, or the police brutality epidemic, undermine the Constitution and all the social fights that had to be fought to get the real backward types to start acting in a civic manner.