The Cold War, Soviet Union, And All Things Atomic

Steven, 24. INTJ. Historian.

[oldshowbiz]

1946 - Atomic Industrial Complex

[georgeosbornescokedealer]

I saw this while surfing Google Ukraine and I could not resist 😂

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[mockwa]

Photos of abandoned Cold War sites across the world

[kropotkindersurprise]

If you listen to US cop propaganda it sounds like they have the most dangerous job there is, and that the ridiculous militarisation of the police force is for their protection, and not just because they’re violent, cowardly bullies on an ego trip. They even have their own little thin blue line flag for bootlickers to show their support for the poor, heroic police men who were just doing their job when they murder black people and beat their wives. Anyway, it turns out that police officer is only the 14th most dangerous job in the US (and that most deaths on the job come from traffic accidents), So I made a bunch of Thin [adjective] Line flags for the people who actually deserve our respect and support, with jobs that are more dangerous than being a cop. The 13 most dangerous jobs in the US:  13. Construction laborers 12. First-line supervisors of mechanics, installers, and repairers 11. Grounds maintenance workers 10. Miscellaneous agricultural workers 9. First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers 8. Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers 7. Delivery drivers and truck drivers 6. Structural iron and steel workers 5. Refuse and recyclable material collectors 4. Roofers 3. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers 2. Fishers and related fishing workers 1. Logging workers So, if you happen to know a garbage man, delivery driver or a lumberjack or whatever, why not print out some bumper stickers of their own Thin [x] Line flag, and thank them for doing their dangerous job without using it as an excuse to murder innocent people.

[gaster]

[comradetriangle]

T-249 arming mechanism for nuclear weapons.

[gaster]

[thepopculturearchivist]

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, September 12, 1960

[oldshowbiz]

Someone should call the FDA

[nelc]

Jumbo, a steel cylinder with walls 14" thick meant to catch the plutonium from the Trinity test if it failed to implode properly. In the event, it survived the atomic detonation. Later attempts to demolish it only succeeded in blowing the ends off.

[danismm]

7-UP! 1959

[historium]

A photograph of some liquidators from Chernobyl disaster on the roof of Reactor three taken by Igor Kostin. The white streaks at the bottom of the photo were due to the high levels of radiation emanating from below. 1986

[blockwarden]

Home Shelters For Family Protection in an Atomic Attack  FCDA, 1953 HathiTrust

[imperialgoogie]

Handy hints for those of you emerging from vaults today.

[jtem]

Atomic Age

[newhistorybooks]

“This is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the evolution of the Soviet regime from a leading expert in postwar Soviet politics… The painstaking research, voluminous detail, and measured analysis make this a must-read for those who want to understand the challenges of sustaining revolutionary dynamism and economic efficiency in the centrally planned economy of the Soviet Union, and why the leadership failed to rise to them.”

[oldshowbiz]

Atomic Alberta

[allenbyseyes-deactivated2023102]

Knee-deep into research this week for a future How We Got Here column. John Dinges and Saul Landau’s Assassination on Embassy Row offers a remarkable reconstruction of the most brazen crime committed by Augusto Pinochet’s Chile: the assassination by car bomb of Orlando Letelier (and an American friend) in Washington, DC on Embassy Row, amidst the diplomatic representatives of dozens of countries. Dinges (an American journalist who covered, and was briefly imprisoned by Pinochet’s regime) and Landau (human rights activist and friend to Letelier) meticulously recreate the plot against Letelier, born of the multinational Operation Condor (a conspiracy of right-wing governments in South American to exterminate political dissidents) and carried out by a conspiracy of Chilean secret police, rightist Cuban exiles and an American adventurer named Michael Townley. It’s one of those stranger-than-fiction stories that’s shockingly faded from public memory; the image of a nominal American ally committing acts of terror against its benefactor, however, seems painfully familiar. The worst thing I can say about Assassination is that isn’t the best book about Pinochet I read this week. That title goes to…

Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File, a comprehensive recounting of the dictator’s crime and the United States’ role in creating and enabling his regime. Kornbluh presents a damning mixture of declassified documents and analysis, demonstrating American meddling in Chilean elections dating back at least to 1961, when Kennedy decided to make the country a test case for his Alliance for Progress - which meant blocking Salvador Allende’s progressive alliance and undermining Chilean democracy in the name of freedom. The utter callousness and naked criminality of American officials, from CIA chiefs Richard Helms and William Colby (“Make economy scream”), to various businessmen hoping to plunder post-coup Chile, to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon’s Cold War obsessions are striking; it’s impossible to read this book and doubt that American intervention was instrumental in destroying Allende’s government. Not that Pinochet is without blame or agency; as Kornbluh shows, despite massive American aid he became a loose cannon, unleashing death squads against dissenters at home and enemies abroad through Operation Condor, culminating in Letelier’s assassination. Accounts of torture, assassination and political chicanery make for painful reading, yet graphically demonstrate the human cost to dictatorship beyond figures and abstract rhetoric. As a case study of amorality in American foreign policy the book’s without peer, though it’s valuable as well at showing how a reckless, evil client can exceed even the worst expectations.

See also: Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela, A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (1991) for examination of the regime’s political, cultural and economic experiences, and John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terror to Three Continents (2004) for a broader look at Operation Condor. I still hope to track down a copy of Thomas Hauser’s The Execution of Charles Horman (1978), which inspired the Costa-Gavras film Missing (1982).