The book is a Harvard Medical School graduate's autobiographical tale of his work in the Radiological Safety Section in the Pacific in the aftermath of the Bikini atomic bomb tests, Operation Crossroads.

[1] The impetus for the tests originated from an inquiry made by future chairman of the Atomic Energy Council, Lewis Strauss who penned to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal in a memorandum dated 16 August 1945 the need to test the navy fleet’s protection against atomic blasts out of fear of losing to obsolescence.

Over 175 reporters were stationed to bear witness to the testing, broadcasting for millions around the world alongside many invited guests that included senators, congressmen, a member of Truman’s cabinet, and invitees from the United Nations.

Since the army only had seven atomic weapons in its arsenal at the time, and because manpower diverted to the cleanup of the ships in the first two experiments caused unexpected delays, it would be nine years before the military understood the effects of nuclear depth charges detonated deep beneath the ocean in Operation Wigwam.

Independence, a survivor of the Able and Baker tests, is being towed into San Francisco from Kwajalein, its once mighty hull now reduced to contorted mutilation that looked “less like a ship than a paper bag blown up and burst” having had endured the concussive pulverization of compressed water that traveled one mile per second.

Bradley was part of the team tasked with surveying the aftermath of the test bombs’ destruction with Geiger counters to catalog the “real threat of atomic weapons, namely the lingering poison of radioactivity” (62).

His journal entries find superficial comfort that fish out of the pacific had no traces of radioactivity compared to those in Bikini Lagoon.

He speaks to the “innocents” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the young men of the army and marines who were made to lie out 2,000 yards from nuclear test blasts to prep them for WWIII conditions.

[5] Scholar David K. Hecht lauds the book, stating that “No Place to Hide is not exclusively concerned with radioactivity; it also gives a detailed account of the preparations and events of the Bikini tests.

In one memorable instance in the book, Bradley has to convince a Navy chief that the ship on which his men had just finished scrubbing and hosing down again and again with soap, lye, and wire brushes, was still just as contaminated with radiation as it was before they started.