1950s

"Zero time was speeding toward me like a car you cannot dodge"

A gripping first-hand account of a nuclear test from 1957

Jan 1 • Alex Wellerstein

Will the survivors envy the dead?

Tracing the origins of a popular trope about nuclear war

Dec 19, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

"I have sought to slaughter as few civilians as possible."

The rabid, apocalyptic Beat poetry that is "Mission with LeMay"

Oct 16, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

Inventing the Doomsday Machine

It is not a thing a sane man would do

Sep 26, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

Critical mastery

The sublime art of nuclear posters

Sep 12, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

Nuclear families

The imagery of the "family" in fallout shelter pamphlets, 1959-1961

Apr 11, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

Civil Defense and Preppers

A brief history of Preppers, part 1

Apr 4, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

Gregory Corso's 1958 poem, "BOMB"

Jan 24, 2025 • Alex Wellerstein

"When I go to my grave, my head will be high"

Bob Dylan's little-known protest song against Civil Defense from 1962

Nov 1, 2024 • Alex Wellerstein

The Occasion Instant, 1961

What can be learned from how people responded to false alarms about nuclear war in the late 1950s?

Sep 11, 2024 • Alex Wellerstein

Famished barbarians

The very British fears of Sam Youd's The Death of Grass

Aug 27, 2024 • Alex Wellerstein

The perfect horror of Chesley Bonestell's nuked New York

Gritty realism in the artwork for a 1950 article on "Hiroshima, U.S.A."

Aug 21, 2024 • Alex Wellerstein

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