Wasteland wrap-up #83

The Paris heatwave, a visit to the Musée des Artes et Métiers, fallout shelter gaming, numinous liminal spaces, and the Oregon Road '83 basement scene...

So supposedly the canicule historique (record heat wave) has finally relented here in France. Over 1,000 people in France died from it, mostly those over 65, but also many people of younger ages, including people who drowned while trying to take refuge in canals and rivers.

On one of our later-afternoon, short, around-the-block, stay-in-the-shade dog outings, Lyndon became convinced there was something interesting inside these planters. I do not know what. He investigated with great gusto. I think staying inside all day makes him very bored. I can relate!

The temperatures were higher than 40°C, which sounds (to me) much less intuitively impressive than the equivalent 104°F. Whatever one thinks about Celsius versus Fahrenheit (obviously one finds whatever one was raised with more intuitive; I tend to agree with the sentiment that Fahrenheit works better for relating how temperatures feel to people living in them, whereas Celsius is better for talking technical topics), the import of something in the triple digits is more dramatic.

We mostly stayed inside. Lyndon would get his “real” walk early in the morning when it was merely “too hot” and not “dangerously hot. After that we had a battery of fans going (no air conditioning in France!), which did not really cool one but made it feel less unbearable. We occasionally put a wet towel on Lyndon, which he did not really enjoy, but it probably did help keep him cooler and enhance the effect of the fans.

We had some friends visiting from the US, and we went to the Musée des Arts et Métiers (Museum of Arts and Crafts) in Paris. It was not air conditioned. Above is a diorama depicting one of the stages of the building of the Statue of Liberty, in which various sizes of smaller sculptures were used as reference for making the larger pieces, which eventually would be used for making the copper pieces.

We only had the power go out once for us, and it was a very localized impact (just part of our street), and the utility people fixed it in within about 90 minutes. Fortunately that was at night when it was a bit cooler.

The fact that the days are so long — we just passed the summer solstice, and the sun doesn’t really fully set until about 10pm, and then is up bright and early again the next day — adds to the surreality of the whole experience, and makes it hard to coordinate one’s day. I managed to get some light writing done (a piece on nuclear films for The Bulletin, which should go up in July), but it is hard to be very productive when one is just boiling in one’s own juices. There is much talk about possible changing attitudes towards air conditioning in France as a result of all of this, but I am somewhat skeptical, given how the French have decided that their anti-AC stance is a moral one. Such attitudes are hard to dislodge and alter.

Above: In front of the Musée des Artes et Métiers is a kinetic sculpture of a horse called “Zeus,” created in 2024 to coincide with the Paris Olympics. It gave off Diamond Age vibes.

My French oral exam was cancelled last week — all manner of schools and offices and so on were shut down for the heat — but will happen next week, supposedly. Yesterday I did get some good French conversational practice with an older woman at the local supermarket who decided to critique everything in my basket, which was amusing if not a little absurd. “That’s a lot of yogurt!” “Yes, we eat it every morning.” “Did you know you can buy it cheaper if you buy it in a big jug, like this?” “Yes, but that is not the kind of yogurt we prefer. This type is less sweet.”

I did feel like I am in a much better place in terms of comprehension and speaking in that I could understand this farcical conversation and more or less participate in it. The downside of learning more French is that I can now understand that most everyday conversations in French are as banal as everyday conversations in English.

A model of a nuclear power plant at the Musée des Artes et Métiers, where pushing buttons on a panel (not shown) made parts of the plant light up. I engaged the very young children of our friends whom we were visiting with in an effort to push all of the buttons at the same time. We were successful, but alas, predictably but disappointingly, it did not undergo a meltdown.

In a few weeks I will be going to the History of Science Society meeting in Edinburgh, which I am excited for. I will be part of two panels there: a moderator of a panel on global nuclear history, and presenting a paper on the architecture of nuclear weapons laboratories (or something along those lines). I will need to pull the paper together over the next few weeks, but it is a fun topic, one I have been thinking about for a long time.

For Doomsday Machines this week, I did a rather short post, which was about all I could make work what with the other writing I was doing and the heat wave. It is about the video game 60 Minutes!, which came out in 2015, and is a very tongue-in-cheek nuclear fallout shelter simulator:

The game came up in the context of a meeting with my student workers who are developing the Oregon Road ‘83 video game this summer. I’ll describe that work below, but a student suggested I take a look at this game (which I had heard about, and actually purchased on Steam ages ago, but not yet played) as one example of how mechanics of being in a fallout shelter has been done.

One last photo from the Musée des Artes et Métiers (boy, am I getting good at spelling that correctly): “propagande méchanique” (mechanical propaganda) from the beginning of the 20th century of an automaton meant to encourage people to use Vitoxy-brand insecticide to kill flies and mosquitos (tue mouches et moustiques). The dog seems appropriately concerned.

I may write about one of the films I watched while writing the nuclear films piece for the Bulletin. I have of course already watched a lot of nuclear-themed films, but (of course) not all of them, and so I was inhaling quite a few additional films while trying to decide exactly which ones to feature. I ended up not featuring a lot of them — there are just too many — but it gave me a lot of fodder for future updates.

Once you get beyond the standards (e.g. Strangelove, The Day After, WarGames, Threads, On the Beach, etc.), and get a bit into the weeds, there are some very curious films. Panic in Year Zero!, Miracle Mile, A Boy and his Dog, Dead Man’s Letters, and Testament are all deserving of some Doomsday Machines attention, I think. If you have a nuclear film that you think I ought to know about, and might have overlooked, let me know in the comments. Heck, even if you think I probably haven’t overlooked it, feel free to post it — it can’t hurt!