#atomic testing

[catgirl-kaiju]

thinking abt The House in the Middle: a 1950s propaganda film that promoted the idea that you can substantially decrease the risk of your house being destroyed in an atomic bombing by keeping the lawn tidy and putting on a new coat of paint on it (sponsored by a coalition of paint companies pretending to be a community outreach org) wherein they attempt to demonstrate this by showing three mock-up houses in various states of disrepair and clutter being subjected to heat and blast from atomic testing.

the titular house in the middle is the tidiest and has fresh coat of paint and it's very obvious that it got just about as fucked up by the blast as the other two, so they resorted to overlaying a matte painting of the middle house looking intact over the blast footage and replaced the rubble left of the middle house with a new house that looks just fucked up enough to fool the audience, but was very clearly not subjected to the heat and blast from an atomic bomb.

it's so fucking funny how obvious the propaganda spin is and it is a great case study in learning how to be critical of filmed content that you see being presented as fact. anyway, here's the poster i made for the archived copy i have on my plex server:

[a-ship-a-day]

Prinz Eugen

German Heavy Cruiser - launched August 22, 1938 - taken as a war prize by the USN December 13th, 1945 - sank at Bikini Atoll during atomic bomb testing

[abs0luteb4stard]

𝕎 𝔸 𝕋 ℂ ℍ 𝕀 ℕ 𝔾

[captainpirateface]

When people yell

"LET'S GOOOOOO!!!!"

This is what I think about;

[retropopcult]

The "Baker" explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on 25 July 1946. The wider, exterior cloud is actually a condensation cloud caused by the Wilson chamber effect, and was very brief. The actual mushroom cloud is inside the condensation cloud. The water released by the explosion was highly radioactive and contaminated many of the ships that were set up near it. Some were otherwise undamaged and sent to Hunter's Point in San Francisco, California, United States for decontamination. Those which could not be decontaminated were sunk a number of miles off the coast of San Francisco.

[tyrianwanderings]

Bomb at Bikini

[irregularincidents]

Speaking of American cities with a reputation for being associated with crime, the circumstances of how Las Vegas became... y’know, LAS VEGAS were themselves kind of interesting.

Founded relatively recently in 1905, originally Las Vegas operated as a stop-over on the railway between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. It stayed this relatively small size until the early 1930s with the construction of the nearby Boulder (later Hoover) Dam.

Because the size of the construction project meant that there were literally thousands of workers wandering around with nothing to do, the decision was made to legalise gambling to both provide the workers with entertainment and to also provide a source of income for the town in the process.

Now, there were casinos operating in Las Vegas prior to the March 1931 decision to legalise it, but upon it’s legalisation there was a prompt explosion in the amount of casinos, bars and theatres in the city offering entertainment to the many visiting construction workers. Many of these theatres and casinos were owned and operated by the Mob, such as, famously, Bugsy Siegal, but interestingly the anti-gambling Church of Latter Days Saints have also had a strong presence in the city and in the establishment of its many casinos.

Side-Fact: For a city that’s gained a reputation as a holiday destination and entertainment centre, one of the most odd (and dangerous) offerings on display for visitors and guests came in the early 1950s with the advent of Atomic Tourism.

This basically being when you could just drive into the desert to see the US military detonate atomic bombs from relative safety, or even drink a cocktail from a hotel as you see the blasts go off in the distance.

Yes, this was a thing. And yes, there were people operating bus tours for people wanting to see the blasts up relatively close. Additionally, due to Las Vegas being Las Vegas, there was also a beauty test themed around the nuclear testing, with the final winner being a Lee Merlin who was crowned Miss Atomic Bomb in May 1957. Above ground atomic testing was banned by international treaty a few years later with the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1962.

[babygruenwald]

Commemorative postcard showcasing event of Sept 8th, 1951.

Thinking that all off-shore nuclear testing was over for the summer, beach-goers in Long Island Beach, N. J. were pleased by a late season blast that rattled windows as far as Stafford Township, and would’ve set off car alarms as far as Woodland, if such things had existed at the time.

Local children enjoyed the free glitter that fluttered from the sky for days after the tests, covering their smiling faces with what the kids gigglingly called “death sparkles.”

- Giclee reproductions of this vintage postcard are available for sale in the Oppenheimer Grotto at the I Am Become Death Pavilion located across the street from Gruenfair (the Gruenwald mansion), Culver Hills, California.