The War Game

The Power of Decision (1956)

All nuclear explosions

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

Fallout flashmob

The Daily What: Frightening Flashmob of the Day

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

Vivos underground shelter

Is this the Vault-tec of 2010? io9 posted a couple of videos from a company called Vivos that builds an underground shelter network in various cities in the States. For 40000$ you can secure your place for the worst case - but only if you bring the right set of skills. No, I don't think "internet writer" is very high on that priority list, too.

Ride Out 2012 In Style With Vivos Apocalypse Shelters - Architecture - io9

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"

How to survive an atomic bomb...

Wow, that comes in handy. Don't forget to print it out and keep it in your purse all the time. At leat you can use it to shield yourself from the rays, so be sure to print it on really thick paper...

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