Doomsday Machines

Doomsday Machines

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"Strange even to the men who used them"
"Atomic bombs" before the discovery of fission
 • Alex Wellerstein
A long look at a QUICK STRIKE
The grim realities of a faux nuclear war plan from 1958
 • Alex Wellerstein
"Civil defense should include spiritual civil defense"
The role of religious organizations in preparing for and recovering from nuclear war, 1951-1956
 • Alex Wellerstein
Forgetting the bomb
Can nuclear weapons be un-invented?
 • Alex Wellerstein
"It is obvious that the immediate destruction of the complete list of 66 cities would have an even more devastating effect on Russia"
The earliest postwar American planning for waging a full-scale nuclear war from 1945
 • Alex Wellerstein
Cutting the head off the Soviet chicken
"By Dawn's Early Light" (1990): a contrived, late-Cold War, made-for-TV nuclear thriller
 • Alex Wellerstein
"Launching missiles is your job."
The sublime banality of Frederick Wiseman's "Missile" (1988)
 • Alex Wellerstein
Bananas for BRAVO
An early attempt to visualize the broader implications of thermonuclear war
 • Alex Wellerstein
"Take me to your shelter, leader!"
Do you have what it takes to be a shelter manager after World War III breaks out? Take this quiz from 1973 and find out!
 • Alex Wellerstein
Playing at the End of the World
An interview with historian and game designer Malcolm Craig about post-apocalyptic tabletop role playing games in the Cold War
 • Alex Wellerstein
You too can survive a nuclear war — if you have a flying car
The essential contradictions of Dean Ing’s Survivalist novel “Pulling Through” (1983)
 • Alex Wellerstein
"Zero time was speeding toward me like a car you cannot dodge"
A gripping first-hand account of a nuclear test from 1957
 • Alex Wellerstein
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