On this day in 1982, in the Great Basin Desert, Christian activists who would eventually name themselves the Nevada Desert Experience, begin a six-week peace vigil and group prayer just outside the Nevada Test Site, the most cratered landscape on earth and the most radioactively contaminated place in the U.S..

928 nuclear tests are conducted here by the time the U.S. halts tests nationwide in 1992. The international Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is adopted in 1996, but the U.S. never officially ratifies it.

Government-led tours of the NTS were canceled in February 2026. Meanwhile, the U.S. is building the Scorpius linear accelerator beneath the NTS to perform tests that do not require explosions. The Nevada Desert Experiment continues to organize nearby events to this day.