Doomsday Machines

Doomsday Machines

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"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
Working at Cold War Los Alamos
A conversation with the chemist Cheryl Rofer about her over thirty year career at Los Alamos
 • Alex Wellerstein
“Mars is signaling a dark star”
A vision of "The End of the World" from the beginning of the 20th century
 • Alex Wellerstein
Bolt out of the blue
Kathryn Bigelow's "A House of Dynamite"
 • Alex Wellerstein
"I have sought to slaughter as few civilians as possible."
The rabid, apocalyptic Beat poetry that is "Mission with LeMay"
 • Alex Wellerstein
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