The Lucky Dragon introduced the world to fallout, adding a whole new dimension of fear and fatality to an already menacing nuclear reality: death dealt from a hundred miles away.

Treatment was problematic, partly because no one had ever suffered the effects of fallout before, the unique combination of doses from both inside and outside the body; in addition, the U.S. refused to tell the Japanese what the contents of the fallout were, under the rubric of national security.

To make matters worse, the U.S. dismissed the severity of the fallout and denied responsibility for the consequences of this action. This attitude did nothing to relieve the already embroiled anxieties about Americans and Atomics.

Upon his death, Aikichi Kuboyama became the first hydrogen bomb casualty, as well as the first known victim of nuclear fallout.

The fallout over the fallout from BRAVO extended well beyond the lives of these twenty-three individuals. The nine tons of contaminated fish they brought home was sold in four major cities and eaten by at least 100 people before anyone realized what had happened. This discovery sparked a national crisis, the "tuna panic." People stopped eating marine products, usually their major source of protein. The fishing industry was devastated as the price of fish plummeted; the fishermen, living near poverty level already, were especially hard hit. Over the course of ten months 457 tons of fish were confiscated and destroyed.

Among the perverse benefits of BRAVO: As scientists tried to find out why contaminated fish continued to be brought in over the next ten months even as the radioactivity in the ocean dispersed they found that radioactivity in the ocean allowed them to trace out paths of ocean currents. They also discovered the principle of bio-accumulation: plankton "ate" the unusual chemicals, concentrating them, then got eaten by larger organisms; then, big fish eats little fish right on up the line.

The Lucky Dragon became a symbol for the world wide anti-nuclear movement.