The War Game

Atomic bomb shelter pass

Death wears bunny slippers

In Nuclear Silos, Death Wears a Snuggie | Danger Room | Wired.com

Atom bomb cake

All nuclear explosions

Blame It On The Voices: History lesson of the day: a map of nuclear explosions

Survival town

A great promotional newsreel from 1955 about "Survival Town", a full-set town model in the Nevada desert on which the US government threw an atom bomb in order to study what happens. They created scenes of daily life with mannequins and even stocked the fridges to analyze radiation levels afterwards.

There's also a two-part color video on Youtube that goes into much more detail about the setting up of the town and the subsequent blast which is rather interesting too. Of course it's all in super-patriotic fifties newsreel speak and music background! More reading and photos in the Weburbanist article.

Blown To Smithereens: The Secret Story Of Survival Town | Design + Ideas on WU

Lego Fat Man

Lego is all the rage now: Lego Blade Runner, Lego Star Wars, Lego spaceships.. but a Lego Fat Man? Hmm, this is bound to offend some people for sure. Made by Andi Domke from Zürich.

Domke - Bald zu kaufen - Lego Bombe

Ground Zero Nagasaki

From the amazingly detailed WWII Timeline over at How Stuff Works:

Results of the Nagasaki atomic bomb attack: Pictured is ground zero in Nagasaki before and after the bombing. Though the city had good bomb shelters, many Japanese had become blasé about air raids and ignored the warning sirens on August 9. Due in part to the hilly topography, damage was confined to an area about 2.3 miles by 1.9 miles. Fire was limited by waterways. Some medical services survived, and even train service continued. The number of deaths was lower than at Hiroshima, with the Japanese government assessing the figure at 25,000. Ironically, Emperor Hirohito was at that very moment trying to decide how to end the war.

Howstuffworks "Japan Surrenders and World War II Ends: June 1945-September 1945"

Comfort the dying

This old public service announcement of the city of Portland doesn't euphemize regarding a nuclear attack: they actually propose to "place newspaper over your head" and "comfort the dying".

mappeal: Comfort the dying

Nuclear artillery

Now take a look at this baby: this is a nuclear artillery cannon, blasting a couple of kilotons toward the commie enemy behind the next ridge, complete with badass lightning effects too. So why didn't this catch on? Why is it again that apart from this one test, atomic bombs are usually detonated remotely or after you drop them from a large altitude?

This photo is actually from a 1953 test in the Nevada desert called Operation Upshot-Knothole and what we see is the "Grable event", a 280mm cannon shooting a 15 kiloton payload. Yeah, the caption says "Hundreds of high ranking Armed Forces officers and members of Congress are present," I guess most of them would have rather skipped this event and the resulting "increased offsite radiation exposures."

Nevada Test Site - Operation Upshot-Knothole - 1953 - a set on Flickr

All nuclear explosions

A good visualization of all nuclear explosions that ever took place.

WeLoveDatavis - Nuclear Explosions since 1942 via i.imgur.com

Stephen Colbert does a nuclear explosion

Permissive action links

Funny how sometimes you actually learn something from playing video games: One mission in the Fort Constantine level in Fallout 3 involves the launching of a nuclear ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile, the launch code for which is "00000000". As it turns out, the so-called "Permissive Action Links" (another word for security locks to prevent unauthorized launches) for the nuclear arsenal of the United States were kept at all zeros until 1977. Another stunning account of Bruce Blair, whose Nuclear Recollections I have posted about recently.

Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark (Episode #1: The Case of the Missing “Permissive Action Links”) - Bruce G. Blair, Ph.D.

Perimetr

Wired magazine run an extremely interesting article about the Russian doomsday device called Perimeter (or Perimetr). It's a system that's designed to launch a nuclear strike back at the enemy even if there's no one left to actually start the missiles. Autonomous ground sensors would record the devastating blow of a nuclear attack and retaliate automatically.

Wired.com: Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine

UPDATE: I found another, similar article in Slate from 2007 which goes even more in-depth about the system, called Perimetr here. Even more interesting are the references to Dr Bruce Blair's Nuclear Recollections, more of which I will be posting soon.

Did the Soviets really build a "doomsday machine"? - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine

The Manhattan Project remnants

Martin Miller has created an interesting photo essay of the remnants of the Manhattan Project. These are mostly pictures from the Oak Ridge facility where the plutonium for the Nagasaki and Hiroshima atom bombs was produced. It's quite fascinating that so much of the facilities is still standing in their original state, and Fallout 3 players should feel right at home with these World War II-era military installations.

One cannot see the nuclear-explosives production facilities built during the Manhattan Project without experiencing a sense of awe at what was accomplished. The scientific, engineering, managerial, labor, and logistical challenges that were met and overcome are separately impressive but, taken together, simply astonishing. It is all the more incredible that this was done in the context of a desperate and bitter war that had already strained the nation's manpower and resources as never before. Yet appreciation of the monumental achievements of the Manhattan Project cannot be considered without a pang of regret at what it unleashed into the world.

Slouching towards Bethlehem ... :: Photography Served

Prepare for the future

If you haven't yet succumbed to the extreme addiction of the game Fallout 3, you can catch a glimpse of the game art and style at the fine promo site Prepare For The Future. It's made up like a Radiation King television set as can be found in the game world, with 9 channels to choose from, each introducing some elements from the game, be it some of the mutated enemies you encounter, weapons, some locations from the virtual Washington D.C., or other game elements.

Prepare For The Future - Fallout 3

Evasion seat

Last weekend I visited the recently opened museum of the former atom bunker of the German government near Marienthal / Bad Neuenahr. The bunker (built between 1960 and 1972) is located about 20 km near the former capital Bonn in a strategical location constructed to enable quick evacuation of the German government in case of a full-scale nuclear attack. The bunker, titled "Ausweichsitz", literally "evasion seat (of the government)", was constructed to house 3000 people for 30 days, in order to keep the German government in a functioning state even when under nuclear attack. For this purpose around 900 offices and 950 dormitories were available in the bunker, plus support systems including 5 canteens, power plant, factory, spare parts storages etc. The bunker tunnels spanned a total of 17km underground and covered 85,000sqm of usable space. Today only a small portion of the bunker is still preserved in the museum, 99% were deconstructed in the phase after the decommissioning of the bunker in 1997.


A visit to the bunker is a veritable Fallout experience, however it's pretty astounding how naive and rudimentary these facilities were planned (all in good German bureaucracy and orderliness, of course). Take the "decontamination chamber" for instance, pictures below, which is located right after the heavy entrance gates. Decontamination consists of two shower rooms, one with regular showers and then another one with "acid" showers. Through a small window with a manually operated wiper, nuclear doctors are watching if everybody has showered well enough...it makes you wonder if this is all there is to dealing with a nuclear catastrophe on a major scale? Same goes for the sick bay, complete with exactly one operating table and one cupboard.


There were more problems with the bunker. For once, it didn't even satisfy the NATO standards for construction which called for at least 200m of rock cover. The Marienthal bunker reached a maximum of 115m, which wouldn't have withstood a direct hit of a hydrogen bomb and the resulting shifts in the bedrock. Also, the whole business of an atom bomb emitting an EMP strike and thus rendering useless most circuits was apparently forgotten, too. I'm not getting into the problem of why bother..? if the whole of Europe is a nuclear wasteland anyway. The whole project cost a large amount of millions in construction, maintenance and ultimately dismantling, and can be termed a conceptional disaster, showpiece to the madness of the Cold War.

Still, the museum is worth a visit and holds a couple of interesting exhibits, such as a "explosion-proof portable phone", vintage posters, and a great Command Center complete with old-school situation map. So a visit is highly recommended if you can find the place. I'm definitely going again soon to catch some more pictures. Unfortunately my camera broke, so I'm using pictures from the (much recommended) web site of the museum for now (see link below). While there, be sure to download the original Bunker Gate siren ringtone!


Ausweichsitz der Verfassungsorgane der Bundesrepublik Deutschland - Historie

The cactus dome

The net tells us that this looks like the bridge part of the USS Enterprise, but this is in fact a concrete topping for nuclear soil:

Beneath this concrete dome on Runit Island (part of Enewetak Atoll), built between 1977 and 1980 at a cost of about $239 million, lie 111,000 cubic yards (84,927 cubic meters) or radioactive soil and debris from Bikini and Rongelap atolls. The dome covers the 30-foot (9 meter) deep, 350-foot (107 meter) wide crated created by the May 5, 1958, Cactus test. Note the people atop the dome.

The Cactus Dome - Brookings Institution

Check out the thermal damage caused by a nuclear explosion

This little widget allows you to check out the blast radius of different sizes of nuclear bombs on any given location. It uses Google maps, so make sure to check out your hometown, too. Would be too bad if you camped inside the blast-radius, wouldn't it?

Ground Zero: Google Maps and Nuclear Weapons

Photos of WMD

Photography Served: Weapons of Mass Destruction