Downwinder. A person who was exposed or presumed to be exposed to radiation from he explosion of nuclear devices. Seventy-six years ago, on July 16, 1945, the first nuclear bomb in the world was exploded in the desert of New Mexico by U.S. military scientists and officials. 40,000 people lived within 50 miles of the blast, many living self-sustained off the landscape. As soon as the bomb went off, the fallout began. Over many decades, radiation exposures traveled through the environment, affecting the land, local water, crops, livestock, and wild animals upon which local residents relied and continue to rely. No one was warned, no one’s health was tracked. Many of these downwinders, victims of the first atomic blast, suffer and have died from cancers and other radiation health effects due to those exposures. They and their families have never been compensated with reparations, not even receiving support with basic health care costs.