Richard King reviews three books in his eponymous blog:
In Point of Departure (1967), the British journalist James Cameron evokes in darkly humorous detail the formative event of his life and career: his attendance at Operation Crossroads in Bikini Atoll in 1946. In his account of the preparations for the test – ‘a monstrous scientific joust’ designed to analyse the effectiveness of atomic weaponry on a battle fleet – Cameron recalls the ‘extravagant multitude of strange personalities’ and their stacks of equipment. In particular, he remembers
the underwater specialist whose contribution to the sum of human knowledge was the fact that the shrimps at the bottom of Bikini Lagoon could talk. They made a sound, he said, resembling: ‘Awk, awk.’
Cameron continues:
Questioned after the explosion as to the behaviour of the atomised shrimps he replied: ‘They are still saying “Awk, awk”, only shriller.’
It is one effect of nuclear weaponry to have made us all a little shriller.
More here.