Bones for the Bomb: Project SUNSHINE’s Stolen Remains

To understand the effects of nuclear fallout, U.S. scientists needed human tissue. So they secretly collected bones—often without consent.

This episode of Unsettled: The Hidden Record examines Project SUNSHINE, a postwar program designed to measure radioactive strontium-90 in human bodies across the globe. To do so, researchers harvested bones from cadavers—many of them children—without informing families.

The goal was scientific: to understand how nuclear testing was contaminating the population. But the methods, cloaked in secrecy, crossed moral and legal lines.

What was justified in the name of deterrence? And what was sacrificed in silence?