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
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when you pay just $15 a year for the CuriosityStream and Nebula bundle deal. That’s because you get access to all Half
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then, on top of all that, you also get access to CuriosityStream, which is home to literally
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tl;dw: tried to collect more property tax from feds who were building a nuclear waste site. Site is still in limbo with no waste. County was ruled against by state courts.