Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Atomic Flashback: Nuclear Fourth of July, 1951

Xeni Jardin at 12:20 pm Mon, Jul 5, 2010

— FEATURED —

Book Review

The Man Who Laughs: grotesque Victor Hugo potboiler was the basis for The Joker

Feature

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Book Review

The Twelve-Fingered Boy - mesmerizing YA horror novel

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
atombomb.jpg

More here.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE:  History • Holiday • Science • Vintage Weird • war

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

  • Roy Trumbull

    There was a lot that went on that you won’t find in history books. The above ground testing at the Nevada Test Site caused very high cancer rates in the towns in Utah to the immediate east.
    M.T. Silvia has just finished “Atomic Mom” which is about to be released. Her mother was scientist who worked on animal experiments in the blast zone. M.T. is one exceptional woman and I know the film will be fantastic. http://www.atomicmom.org

  • Antinous / Moderator

    That’s entertainment.

  • millrick

    damn, but i really miss the good old days, when i would lay awake at night worrying about nuclear annihilation….

  • WaylonWillie

    that was no entertainment. that’s how we take care of finks down here in b’more.

    • Nash Rambler

      WaylonWillie’s right; whole neighborhoods look bombed, shelled, and burned out around B’more. Next week they’re napalming Highlandtown.

  • yri

    Yeah, the constant fear of global nuclear war lent such a frisson to life back then.

  • mr.skeleton

    There was a recent story on NPR about a 1962 nuclear test in space! ‘Atomic Rainbow Over Honolulu’!
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775

  • Anonymous

    Better dead than Red….

  • Haakon IV

    Also found this to be cool, creepy, and sobering:

    http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/

    Over 2000 nuclear explosions.

  • Anonymous

    Buddy of mine worked on simulated nuke explosions. Want to test blast effects of a nuke, but pesky treaty in the way? Just fill a warehouse in the middle of the desert with a couple million pounds of conventional explosives, prop your stuff up around it, light the fuse and run.

    He said it tore up the desert pretty good.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Scale

  • Ugly Canuck

    I like the phrase “atomic flashback”: it sounds like an actual blast effect, but there is no such physical thing.
    Perhaps it comes from the new field of nuclear psychiatry?

    • Anonymous

      ICD-9 309.81 with a code from E996, PTSD resulting from wartime use of nuclear weapons. You can get pretty specific with ICD codes.

    • Gerald Tarrant

      ICD-9 309.81 with a code from E996, PTSD resulting from wartime use of nuclear weapons. You can get pretty specific with ICD codes.

  • alexx

    WAR IS PEACE

    FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

    IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

    Rereading 1984 is coming in handy.