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J. Robert Oppenheimer, in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, stoked the elation of his Los Alamos scientists after the successful Trinity test: “I just wish we had it in time to use against the Germans!” While the crowd erupted into a patriotic cheer, Oppenheimer was lost in a thousand-yard stare. He imagined the bomb’s white flash sear the skin from his wife’s proud face and burn the stripes off the scientists’ American flags.

I couldn’t help but think of this scene when President Trump declared that the Department of War would resume nuclear testing. From my experience working with victims of these bombs, the human cost in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer isn’t too far off. Nuclear testing isn’t a zero-casualty game. Its immediate and long-term effects might just bring about Oppenheimer's violent vision. 

Here’s why Trump makes me scared for my life—and why you should be, too.

President Trump announced via Truth Social that the Department of War would “immediately” begin testing nuclear weapons in response to rising threats from other nations. The United States would break its 33-year streak of nuclear abstinence, joining North Korea as one of two nations to test in the twenty-first century. The President justified his choice by claiming that American enemies are growing their arsenals while we fall behind. But Russia ceased testing its bombs in 1990. And China hasn’t tested its arsenal since 1996. Military experts estimated that accommodating President Trump’s expedited order would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take two years to ready a test site. 

Some youth on social media met this announcement with excitement. They thought that the United States would finally demonstrate its global dominance, as each test sticks it to our enemies. After all, these revolutionary weapons were strong enough to end the noble war against fascism and resolve global conflict in mere minutes. I used to think nuclear weapons were cool, too. 

But working with nuclear testing victims in the Marshall Islands, I saw what nuclear testing really means. 

“Our bodies were being used as lab rats,” Ambassador Debrum of the Marshall Islands told me. The United States conducted 67 tests on the atoll during the Cold War, including Castle Bravo, the United States’ largest test. As a protectorate of the U.S., Ambassador Debrum told me, the United States didn’t ask for permission. Nor did they evacuate residents. 

Today, seven-year-olds ink columns of flames in classrooms to learn about their country’s victimhood. Radioactive decay has seeped into every element of Marshallese life and culture. Ambassador Debrume experienced this on her daily walk home from school. She would cut through the air-conditioned hallways of the local hospital to escape the summer heat. “Every time we would pass by the laboratory door, we would start wondering—what they had in there was so scary—they put the babies in jars.”

These “jelly babies,” or babies born without bones due to nuclear radiation, plagued the first two generations of Marshallese people. In subsequent years, native fisheries turned radioactive, and native diets were replaced with highly processed American food. Water around the islands was deemed unsafe, uprooting Marshallese traditions and culture. 

To reconcile, the United States paid locals to contain radioactive material in the Runit Dome Memorial. The native laborers later died of cancer. And rising sea levels will submerge the dome in the next few years. Now, many Marshallese flee to the United States for economic opportunity and healthcare. They are forced to live among their oppressors. 

This history wasn’t exclusive to the Marshallese people, either. I shared similar conversations with communities in Kazakhstan and Nevada that were both subjected to nuclear testing. Over 8,000 miles away, each community shares similar suffering. 

During these conversations, a youth leader from the Islands asked me, “Why do you care?”

It was impossible to miss the resignation in her gaze as she asked me this question. I could see in her eyes that she lived another history—no flags, no celebratory cries, nor ideas of historical grandeur. She saw me as another American with military aspirations and an empty promise. I told her that I can’t let my country do this again.

This is why Trump’s nuclear testing scares me. It entails a similar sequence of suffering. But not just for one community, this time. For all.

At home, President Trump would rather detonate a spectacle of horror than test simulations. He would rather show his power than hold it. Studying nuclear security, we are first taught that it’s a game about permission. When we detonate our first few tests, China and Russia will have every right to follow suit. And with one stroke of a pen, three decades of disarmament become the first victims of testing.

But we’re also taught that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were more about sending the Soviets a message than winning the war. And likewise, testing is about demonstrating capability more than it is about clarifying our own propensity. So in a world with testing, the consequences aren’t just immediate; it's a gradual decay of the norm of disarmament. We shouldn’t feel safe in a world where our egotistical leaders compete in a nuclear dick-measuring contest.

I like to think that Oppenheimer’s vision was realistic. Trump now holds that Promethean fire. And he’s on track to raze the American flags.