Qualla: Project Carryall

Project Carryall: Introduction

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The proposal called for 22 nuclear devices — ranging from 20 to 200 kilotons each — plus one additional crater-forming explosion, detonated in sequence through the Bristol Mountains to carve an 11,000-foot highway pass 360 feet deep. Project Carryall, as the Atomic Energy Commission named it in 1963, was not a joke. It was an earnest application of Plowshare Program thinking: if nuclear weapons could be used for peaceful construction, why not build highways with them? The nearest town to the proposed blast site was Amboy, California. The AEC calculated that the dust cloud would extend seven miles wide at ground level and reach up to 100 miles downwind.

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Project Carryall: The Logic of Atomic Excavation

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Plowshare Program — the U.S. government's effort to find peaceful uses for nuclear explosives — had proposed using atomic bombs to dig canals, create harbors, and excavate mountain passes since the late 1950s. The physics was sound in a narrow sense: nuclear explosions do mov...

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Project Carryall: What the Plan Required

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The AEC's environmental assessment was, by modern standards, cavalier. The dust cloud from 23 nuclear detonations in the Mojave Desert would extend seven miles wide at surface level and travel up to 100 miles downwind, depending on wind conditions. A four-day closure of all human...

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Project Carryall: The Withdrawals

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

California withdrew its support from Project Carryall in 1966. The state's objections centered on the radiological and environmental risks that the AEC's optimistic framing had minimized. Three years later, in 1969, the Southern Pacific Railroad dropped its participation — the ra...

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Project Carryall: The Mojave as Test Case

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Project Carryall was not unique in its ambitions. The Plowshare Program proposed nuclear excavation in Alaska, Nevada, and along the Panama Canal Zone. What distinguished Carryall was its ordinariness: it wasn't proposing to create something spectacular like a new harbor but simp...

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