A collection of previously classified nuclear test films, of which Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the East Bay has an archive of some 6,000, have been posted to YouTube for public viewing. As CBS 5 reports, the lab decided to post a handful of them in the most public way possible after digitizing about 4,000 of them, and nuclear physicist Greg Spriggs says that scientists at the lab are still discovering things in the film that had not been previously analyzed and may still remain state secrets.

Spriggs says in the video above that the project to digitize the films came at just the right time, as "these films are on the brink of decomposing to the point that they'll become useless."

But, Spriggs said of the decision to post the moving images of these detonations, which occurred between 1945 and 1962, ""We hope that we would never have to use a nuclear weapon ever again. I think that if we capture the history of this and show what the force of these weapons are and how much devastation they can wreak, then maybe people will be reluctant to use them."

Here are just a few of those recently uploaded.