Castle Bravo
The decision to carry out the Bravo test under the prevailing winds was made by Dr. Alvin C. Graves, the Scientific Director of Operation Castle. Graves had total authority over detonating the weapon, above that of the military commander of Operation Castle. Graves appears in the widely available film of the earlier 1952 test "Ivy Mike", which examines the last-minute fallout decisions. The narrator, the western actor Reed Hadley, is filmed aboard the control ship in that film, showing the final conference. Hadley points out that 20,000 people live in the potential area of the fallout. He asks the control panel scientist if the test can be aborted and is told "yes", but it would ruin all their preparations in setting up timed measuring instruments. In Mike, the fallout correctly landed north of the inhabited area but, in the 1954 Bravo test, there was a large amount of wind shear, and the wind that was blowing north the day before the test steadily veered towards the east.
Castle of Castelo Branco
A storm caused a landslide that destroyed the eastern/northern corner tower, leading to a formal request to the DGEMN to begin a project of restoration and lookout. Simultaneously, the municipality solicited ideas for the reconstruction of the castle from Engineer Manuel Tavares dos Santos, but lacking any funds, this project was abandoned. By 1975, the possibility of demolishing the wall along "Rua Vaz Preto" was examined: the DGEMN analyzed the walls along this corridor in 1977, in order to determine the viability, while the municipal authority expropriated homes along the segment of the walls.