UP IN SMOKE

Making plans for Rigel.

Today in 1966 France tested a nuclear bomb codenamed Rigel, a 150-kiloton device detonated on oft-blasted Fangataufa Atoll, and above you see a photo of the pyrocumulus debris cloud from that event. We’re aware this is the third French nuclear test we’ve posted in a row, but we aren’t singling them out—it’s just that the French, artsy as they are, take such interesting photos, even of the horror that will one day bring about the end of civilization. But there’s a silver lining to all this. When the scabby old men who have their fingers on the nuclear buttons finally unleash these terrible weapons, the male survivors roaming the frozen landscape of nuclear winter can take solace in the fact that genetic mutations will have made actual, authentic tri-boobed women the norm. As for any benefits for women, well, we figure humanity will have finally learned that males should not be—and should never have been—in control of anything important. Oh, and double penises. Plenty of those. 

But wait—doesn't the sun rise in the east?

We shared an interesting photo of the French nuclear test Canopus a few years ago, and today we have another image showing the blast from many miles away. Even more than the numerous close quarters photos we’ve posted here, this really shows the titanic and awful power of the weapons that may eventually destroy us.

What’s another nuclear bomb, more or less?

This nuclear test, which was codenamed Dione, was a 34-kiloton blast conducted by France in the South Pacific at Mururoa Atoll, which along with its sister atoll Fangataufa was the site of nearly two hundred atomic detonations. The bomb was named after one of the thousands of Océanides, who in Greek mythology were aquatic nymphs born of their father Ocean and their mother the sea goddess Tethys. We only mention all that because we love how the French can poeticize even the worst thing ever created by humanity. Anyway, the test was today in 1971, and if that seems late for an aboveground test, it wasn’t—France exploded its last nuclear bomb on Mururoa in 1996.

Wrong place, wrong time, same result.

This is the mushroom cloud generated by the French nuclear test Canopus, detonated at Fangataufa Atoll, located in the Tuamotu Archipelago, part of French Polynesia. The blast occurred today in 1968, and if you happen to search for images of the explosion online you will probably not find the one above. What you will find is many photos of the Licorne burst from Mururoa Atoll, 1970. But they are all wrongly attributed. How do we know? See here. And if you’re inclined, you can watch a film of the Canopus explosion here.

We rarely explain anything about Pulp Intl., preferring instead to let you wander through the nearly 1,800 scattered posts the same way you might wander through the clutter of a used bookstore. But today we’re making an exception, because while searching the internet for Canopus images we came across a site—which we won’t soil our webpage by naming—that was populated by the most depraved sub-humans we’ve encountered online in a long time. It was a forum, and on this forum the participants unanimously agreed that either Mecca or Teheran—or both—should be nuked. Reading these idiotic tirades, it occurred to us that an occasional visitor to Pulp Intl. might see our nuke postings as some sort of endorsement of their existence or usage. So for the record, we think nuclear weapons are self-evidently bad, but we post these explosions because, from Hiroshima to Kiss Me Deadly to Harlan Ellison, they are an inextricable part of the pulp and post-pulp eras. 

Femme Fatale Image

ABOUT

SEARCH PULP INTERNATIONAL

PULP INTL.
HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

VINTAGE ADVERTISING

Things you'd love to buy but can't anymore

Vintage Ad Image

Around the web