The wretched pending obliteration of the Outer Banks oddly brings to mind that the government in 1948 considered it as a nuclear test site before settling on Nevada. (And the Times in 1991 implied this was a mistake!) nytimes.com/1991/05/17/us/…
It's amazing how persistent a theme it is in the history of science and technology for proponents of nutty views to describe their proponents as "hysterical" and suggest sensible psychological measures to ameliorate it. 
They were also considering nuclear testing on the coasts of Delaware, Maryland, or Virginia! Like 50 miles from D.C.!
This would have been okay because "meteorology is favorable for removing the waste out to sea during 2/3 of the year between 20-30% of the time"! Fifty percent of the time it works every time! Totally bonkers!
Later they realized that actually weather patterns on the Outer Banks are too difficult to reliably predict fallout. Oops! Guess it's a good thing we didn't nuke it!
I learned of this while randomly perusing bookshelves in a lovely little bookstore just down the road from one of the proposed ground zeroes, so I take it a bit personally.
