American cities after the nuke: 1950s tabloid illos

Jake sez, "An old copy of 1950s tabloid Pageant included some amazing illustrations of what an American city would look like after an atomic bomb blast. They're both somewhat chilling and somewhat hilarious."

Amazing 1950s Illustrations of American Cities Destroyed by A-Bombs (Thanks, Jake!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: cold war • illustration • postapocalptic • war

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hassenpfeffer

I get the “chilling” for sure, but I’m completely missing the “hilarious.” The illo of the infant with the swaddled head reminded me of a scene in “Testament” (PBS’s film about post-nuke life that’s far superior to “The Day After”) in which a mother lifted her naked child from a water-filled sink and it becomes apparent that the child is bleeding profusely from its rectum.
invisibelle

Initial reaction to the one featured in this post is that it reminds me of the aftermath in the game Rampage.
dross1260

Alexander Leydenfrost
http://anomicofficedrone.com/ AnomicOfficeDrone

It looks like concept art for Infamous on PS3.
nicksalvo

Hilarious? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
frankieboy

Of course the illustrator(s) were drawing on very recent experience.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=542921054 Steve Schnier

Uh… Could someone point out the hilarious part? I think I missed it.
Jonathan Badger

Yes, I guess Cory means “hilarious” in the sense that the bombs depicted would be very weak by modern standards, and maybe even by mid 1950s standards. But as Frankieboy mentions, the illustrators were probably basing this on the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- benher
  
  I think that’s what he means too, but I still find it annoying. Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s bombs were not firecrackers. They turned people to ash in a heartbeat and left behind nothing but shadows on concrete. And those were the fortunate ones.
  
  Not Not Not Hilarious… even somewhat. I have a hard time believing that anyone who has made a trip to either of those cities would be able to even use a word that implies “humor” without some massive amount of cognitive dissonance at work.
alephxero

War. War never changes.
- HenryPootel
  
  I was just going to post a Fallout reference alephxero but you’ve nicely beat me to it :)
lknope

The fear mongering is sort of hilarious.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1620916542 Fred Davis

Here’s a similar illustration/scenario by Winsor McCay done 20 years ealier: http://www.fdavis.com/blog/mccay/11.html
http://www.facebook.com/fletcher.moore Fletcher Moore

I laughed so hard I blew coffee out of my nose. Absolute hilarity.
strstu

I wonder what portion of white flight from urban to suburban areas can be attributed to fear of the bomb.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness

As someone pointed out above the bombs in question would be very small compared to what would be available by the end of the decade and widespread by the mid 60′s. However, by the mid 1970′s bombs started getting a little smaller. Yields over one megaton were not uncommon at one time, but now a typical large nuke is 300 to 400 kt.
- travtastic
  
  Major targets would be receiving multiple warheads, however. Probably with overlapping blast coverage.
jtegnell

Oh, and apparently homosexually can be cured as well.
jtegnell

And is that Matthew Broderick in drag?