Doomsday Machines

Doomsday Machines

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1950s

Inventing the Doomsday Machine
It is not a thing a sane man would do
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
5
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Critical mastery
The sublime art of nuclear posters
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Alex Wellerstein
7
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Nuclear families
The imagery of the "family" in fallout shelter pamphlets, 1959-1961
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Alex Wellerstein
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Civil Defense and Preppers
A brief history of Preppers, part 1
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
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Nuke Beat
Gregory Corso's 1958 poem, "BOMB"
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Alex Wellerstein
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"When I go to my grave, my head will be high"
Bob Dylan's little-known protest song against Civil Defense from 1962
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Alex Wellerstein
22
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The Occasion Instant, 1961
What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
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Famished barbarians
The very British fears of Sam Youd's The Death of Grass
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
25
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The perfect horror of Chesley Bonestell's nuked New York
Gritty realism in the artwork for a 1950 article on "Hiroshima, U.S.A."
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Alex Wellerstein
13
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The Big Board
How does one visualize the scope of a full-scale nuclear war?
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
6
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© 2025 Alex Wellerstein
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