Retrodeb. The film was made around the city of St.George Utah
Nuclear contamination
On May 19, 1953, the United States government detonated the 32-kiloton (130 TJ) atomic bomb (nicknamed "Harry") at the Nevada Test Site. The bomb later gained the name "Dirty Harry" because of the tremendous amount of off-site fallout generated by the bomb.[14] Winds carried fallout 135 miles (217 km) to St. George, where residents reported "an oddly metallic sort of taste in the air."[15]
The Howard Hughes motion picture, The Conqueror, was being filmed in the area of St. George at the time of the detonation. The fallout is often blamed for the unusually high percentage of cancer deaths among the cast and crew.
St. George received the brunt of the fallout of above-ground nuclear testing in the Yucca Flats/Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas. Winds routinely carried the fallout of these tests directly through St. George and southern Utah. Marked increases in cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers were reported from the mid-1950s through 1980.[16][17]
A 1962 United States Atomic Energy Commission report found that "children living in St. George, Utah may have received doses to the thyroid of radioiodine as high as 120 to 440 rads" (1.2 to 4.4 Gy).[18]
Taken From
http://www.ask.com/wiki/St._George,_Utah?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
Also
http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/radiationdeathanddeception.html
Also
On May 19, 1953, a 32-kiloton atomic bomb was detonated at the Nevada Test Site. The bomb was code named Harry, but local residents gave it the nick name Dirty Harry after massive amounts of fallout blanketed the surrounding area. Exploding on the Yucca Flat, Harry had a blast three times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. On May 14, 37 members of congress had arrived to see the blast that had been scheduled that day. Delays kept pushing it back and as the delegation became impatient, only 23 members had stayed long enough to actually see the blast. In a trench 4,000 yards from ground zero, 900 servicemen witnessed the detonation.
Winds carried the fallout 135 miles to the town of St. George, UT. The AEC had set up monitors in the town which detected readings of 6,000 milliroentgens. Many of the people who were outside and downwind reported feeling ill on the day of the blast. People complained of headaches, fever, thirst, dizziness, loss of appetite, general malaise, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, hair loss, discoloration of fingernails, hemorrhaging, and burns to exposed skin. All of these are symptoms of radiation sickness and indicate exposure to relativity high doses of radiation.
Taken From
http://www.toxipedia.org/display/wanmec/Radioactive+Fallout+to+St.+George,+UT
Plus this is only one town or city.