Paranoia

If it’s not an American Flag, it’s probably a bomb.

This renewed talk of building nuclear weapons here in the US reminded me of an old report of photos of the sky glow from nuclear tests done in Nevada seen over Los Angeles. This one includes the following description:

Atomic explosion, the largest yet set off on the Nevada test range, was clearly visible in Los Angeles. Staff photographer Perry Folwer was ready with his camera on a tripod on the roof of the Herald-Express building when the blast occurred at 5:49 a.m. Reporter Jack Smith, points towards the great white flash that clearly silhouetted mountains to the east. The brilliant spectacle was seen by many early-rising residents of Los Angeles. Photo dated: February 2, 1951.

More: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

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Boing Boing has an exclusive profile of neutron bomb inventor Samuel T. Cohen by Charles Platt. All the reports so far are that it’s a 10,000 word “must read.”

The article, Profits of Fear, is available in PDF, plain text, and Palm doc versions at Boing Boing.

Thanks to David Rothman for the heads up. Extra: Rothman asks what it all says about mainstream media when respected authors eschew traditional media for blogs.

tags: boing boing, boingboing, bomb, charles platt, fear, inventor, moral weapon, neutron, neutron bomb, nuclear weapon, nuclear weapons, nuke, sam cohen, samuel cohen, samuel t cohen, samuel t. cohen, weapon, weapon designer

While looking for a picture for my memorial to the bomb, I found a number of related links. This blog is sometimes nothing more than an annotated bookmark list, and this is why….

The Bomb Project describes itself as:

a comprehensive on-line compendium of nuclear-related links, imagery and documentation. It is intended specifically as a resource for artists, and encourages those working in all media, from net.art, film and video, eco-intervention and site-specific installation to more traditional forms of agitprop, to use this site to search for raw material.

Google, however, pointed me to their old index. It’s there that I found links to Bruce Conner’s Bombhead and Robert Longo’s Nagasaki, part of his Sickness of Reason gallery.

Gregory Walker at Virgina Polytechnic’s Center for Digital Discourse and Culture maintains pages of information on the effects of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. It’s here that you’ll find three videos of nuclear tests, including a house blown away, planes destroyed, and trees snapped like matchsticks. These things are scary, even rotten.com has a page on atomic bombs.

Carey Sublette’s The Nuclear Weapon Archive is included in this list mainly because it quotes H.G. Wells:

…And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.

Finally, Animation World Network has an interesting story on Walt Disney’s nuclear propaganda. More amusing than that, however, may be this 1957 atomic revolution comic book, from which the image above is taken.

Extra: don’t forget Blondie’s Atomic.

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In what was to be the final act of World War II in the Pacific, the United States made the first and only use of nuclear power as a weapon in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th (US dates), 1945.

George Weller of the Chicago Daily News snuck in to Nagasaki in early September 1945 and became the first American journalist to see the destruction. His stories were censored, and official sources maintained control of news about the bombings and the aftermath for many years.

Mainichi Daily News has a pair of photo galleries of Hiroshima bomb damage and how the city remembers the bomb today.

Nuclear-related stories at MaisonBisson.

tags: 60th anniversary, atomic, atomic bombing, bomb, bombing, bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki, bombing of japan, destruction, hiroshima, hiroshima and nagasaki, hiroshima bombing, japan, nagasaki, nagasaki bombing, nuclear, nuclear bomb, nuclear power, nuke, pacific war, second world war, united states, war, world war II