This video was made possible by CuriosityStream.
For just $15 a year, get the best deal in streaming—access to both CuriosityStream
and Nebula—at CuriosityStream.com/HAI.
This is Bullfrog County.
Well, technically this was Bullfrog County, but like so many things—Blockbuster, Quibi,
my dignity, and the 1990 police-procedural/musical-television series Cop Rock—it doesn’t exist anymore,
and this is the deceased county’s most prominent feature, Yucca Mountain, named yucca because
mountains are freaking gross.
When I say most prominent feature, though, I really mean only feature, because unlike
the rest of Nevada’s counties, Bullfrog Country had no laws, no roads, no people—not
even a random Subway entirely staffed by a single high-schooler.
Understanding why Nevada politicians created this county in the late 1980s requires us
to look beyond the silver state’s borders and trace the intersection between scary nuclear
waste and scarily boring politics.
You see, after the United States started using nuclear weapons to blow stuff up, blow people
up, and blow up stuff with people in it, it also began using nuclear energy to power stuff.
Much like my writing sessions, this created trash—nuclear trash, to be specific, which
scientists also call nuclear waste, and which I call glowy-glowy-boom-juice.
By the 1980s the US federal government had a lot of glowy-glowy-boom-juice and started
asking itself, “where do you store used radioactive material so that it won’t ruin
the environment or kill people while it cools off over the course of thousands of years,”
which was a great question to ask after, and not before, they had produced thousands of
pounds of the stuff.
Faced with that question, if you’re the feds, you’d probably pick a place where
you have a lot of land and not a lot of people.
In short, you’d probably pick middle-of-nowhere Nevada.
While Nevada is its own state, and Nevadans are their own people, over 80 percent is federal
land, which is sometimes a touchy subject: just ask Cliven Bundy.
Because of this plethora of land in Nevada that’s not really Nevada’s land, Yucca
Mountain became a finalist in the prestigious deadly dump sweepstakes, alongside Hanford,
Washington, and Deaf Smith County, Texas, and wouldn’t you know it: at the deadly
dump sweepstakes, Yucca Mountain was declared the winner and given the grand prize of housing
a ton, metaphorically not physically, of deadly radioactive waste!
In 1987, the US Congress signed what Nevadans affectionately referred to the “screw Nevada
Bill,” which actually wasn’t a bill but an amendment, and has yet to really screw
Nevada, but which formally declared that the nation’s nuclear dump was to sit below Yucca
Mountain, well, at least in theory.
Now, the people of Nevada weren’t huge fans of radioactive waste in their backyard—it
turns out that despite what comic books say, the only superpower it actually gives you
is bone cancer—but Nevadan politicians figured they might as well make the most of it…
the most money that is.
See, in order to sweeten the pot on the hellhole sweepstakes, the feds decided that they’d
do the forced hosts of this facility a solid and pay property taxes—something they’re
normally exempt from—which go in part to the county government.
This is where Nevada politicians’ eyes started turning into big cartoon dollar signs, but
that might also be a radiation side effect.
Late on June 18, 1987, Nevada’s legislature hastily drew up a bill that carved a 12-mile
by 12-mile county around Yucca mountain—where the nuclear dump would be put.
The county had no people, no roads, but it did have one key characteristic: sky-high
property taxes.
You see, unlike Nye County, the previous home to Yucca Mountain, this new county, Bullfrog
County, possessed the maximum property tax allowed by the state’s constitution.
“But Sam,” you ask, “if there were no people in the county, where did the money
go?”
Well first of all, how dare you question me, but second, the Nevada government placed Bullfrog’s
“county seat” 270 miles away, outside of the county itself, in the state’s capital,
Carson City, meaning these tax dollars wouldn’t go to the no people in Bullfrog county, but
to the state government.
“But Sam,” you ask, “doesn’t making a county with no people in it create a ton
of legal problems!?”
Well again, you have absolutely no right to speak directly to me, let alone call me Sam,
but yes—because Bullfrog County had no sheriff, no legal system, and no means by which to
assemble a jury, the county was a theoretical safe haven for murder—but its exceptionally
high property taxes ensured that if the US stuffed Yucca Mountain with radioactive trash
for the next hundred thousand years, they’d at least get paid for it to the tune of around
$25 millions dollars a year, and as we all know, money is more important than human life.
At least, that’s what it says in the Half as Interesting Incorporated company bylaws.
But alas, the money-making murder square was not long for this world.
Nye County, screwed by Nevada’s response to the “screw Nevada bill,” decided to
screw Nevada back, and sued on state constitutional grounds.
The people of Nye, of course, were a little upset that the state’s newest, smallest,
and person-less county had just cut them off from a potential property tax cash cow.
Ultimately, the state’s supreme court agreed, saying that despite how awesome it sounds
to have a Nevada county where you don’t have to deal with any Nevadans living there,
counties with no people were unconstitutional, and by 1989, Bullfrog County was no more.
What didn’t disappear, though, were debates over how to go about disposing of the nation’s
nuclear waste—over $9 billion have been spent figuring out how to properly stuff Yucca
mountain to no avail.
Today, Yucca Mountain remains decidedly unstuffed, and as of 2010, de-funded, as the federal
government has effectively given up on piling all its radioactive waste in southern Nevada.
Though still technically the nation’s only nuclear waste depository, Yucca Mountain remains
empty—or, technically it’s full of mountain, but you know what I mean.
Instead, the US' nuclear waste is housed in temporary storage sites across the country
and, meanwhile, to Nevadans, the Federal Government is still pretty much the baddies which is
truly, at this point, the only viewpoint holding our deeply divided nation together.
So, you like exclusive stuff, right?
You like that momentary, artificial feeling of superiority when you get access to something
that other people don’t, like the fast-track line at Disneyworld?
You’ve done nothing to deserve that superiority, but it still feels good.
Well, that’s the feeling that you can get when you pay just $15 a year for the CuriosityStream
and Nebula bundle deal.
That’s because you get access to all Half as Interesting and Wendover videos early and
ad-free, plus occasional extended cuts of our normal videos, plus big-budget HAI and
Wendover Nebula originals, plus our Nebula exclusive podcast called Showmakers, plus
all this from all these other fantastic creators, then, on top of all that, you also get access
to CuriosityStream, which is home to literally thousands of documentaries and shows which
are simultaneously entertaining and educational.
I would hope that any refined HAI viewer enjoys the intersection between entertainment and
education, so this is probably perfect for you.
Also, this is all just $15 a year, at current sale pricing, which, once again, makes it
by far the best deal in streaming, and it’s exclusively available at CuriosityStream.com/HAI.