Doomsday Machines

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The Retreaters
A brief history of Preppers, part 2
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Alex Wellerstein
7
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Civil Defense and Preppers
A brief history of Preppers, part 1
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
5
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Exponential stockpiles
How the meaning of the Cold War nuclear arms race both is and isn't revealed in the data
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
6
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The meme-ification of the "Demon Core"
The strange transformation of a criticality accident into dark Internet humor
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
12
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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
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
22
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"Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?"
The West German nuclear zeitgeist as reflected in two pop songs
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
14
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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
9
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The Trigger Effect
James Burke's vision of a suddenly un-connected world
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Alex Wellerstein
15
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Famished barbarians
The very British fears of Sam Youd's The Death of Grass
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
27
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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."
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
15
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Pantex employee photos, 1980s
Team photographs at a nuclear weapons factory offer a glimpse into the mundanity and materiality of the bomb
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
11
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What would a faithful World War Z adaptation look like?
Is it possible to make a serious, thoughtful movie about global disaster and recovery?
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
34
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A Possible Chapter in American History
Is this the most honest graph made for public consumption by a government Civil Defense agency? (Yes, it is.)
 • 
Alex Wellerstein
14
© 2025 Alex Wellerstein
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