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Above, two photos of the 22-kiloton nuclear test codenamed MET, part of the series Operation Teapot, detonated at Frenchman Flat, Nevada, with military observers first shielding their eyes, then regarding the debris cloud, today in 1955.
Above is a photo of the U.S. nuclear test Upshot–Knothole Annie, which was conducted as part of a series of explosions known as Operation Upshot–Knothole. Scientists studied the effect of a nuclear blast on wooden houses (wiping out any possible equity), a bunch of automobiles (totally ruining their resale value), and eight bomb shelters (which actually functioned properly, but with a blasted radioactive landscape crawling with ravenous zombies, what would be the point of surviving?). Interestingly, the test was broadcast on national television, which goes to show you can convince people to watch anything, even a vision of their own future destruction. The broadcast was also recorded on a kinescope, which makes it a rare recording of the actual sound of an atomic blast—the last sound you hear. That was today in 1953.
They just don’t build them like they used to. Above you see a U.S. Energy Department photo that’s been well-circulated around the internet showing the shell of a house that endured the Apple II nuclear test, a 29-kiloton shot fired today in 1955. The building was part of Survival Town, a collection of homes, fallout shelters, power systems, and communications hubs erected in the Nevada desert to gauge the effects of nuclear explosions on civilian structures. The effect, predictably, was catastrophic, but this one lived through it. With a little effort it could become a nice Airbnb.
This photo shows the crater made by the Sedan nuclear test, also known as the Storax Sedan test, which happened today in 1962 as part of Operation Storax. The crater is the result of an explosion that displaced twelve million tons of earth, and at 320 feet deep and 1280 feet in diameter is the largest man-made crater in the United States. It’s also—bizarrely we think—listed on the National Register of Historic Places, especially weird when you consider that it sent two radioactive plumes wafting northeast from the Nevada explosion site, cross country from state to unsuspecting state, to settle especially heavily upon Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Illinois. Of all the nuclear tests conducted in the United States, Sedan ranked highest in overall activity of radionuclides in fallout, distributing nearly 7% of the total amount of radiation which fell on the U.S. population during all of the nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. Historic indeed. You see the explosion that caused all that below.
This photo shows the debris cloud of the nuclear test Priscilla, which was part of the series of tests codenamed Operation Plumbbob, conducted during the summer and autumn of 1957 at the Nevada Test Site. For this particular blast, more than seven hundred pigs were garbed in suits made of different materials to test various means of protecting living tissue from thermal radiation. Guess what? It didn’t work. The pigs survived, but with third-degree burns over 80% of their bodies, making for one of the cruelest, but undoubtedly most mouth-watering nuclear tests in history.
Above, a cover for The Name of the Game by Champ Thomas for Neva Spicy Library, a subsidiary of Neva Paperbacks, 1967. The unusual name of the publisher derives from its location in the world capital of sleaze, Las Vegas, Nevada. Uncredited art.
In the photo above, department store manager Hillman Lee checks out a group of battered mannequins he had helped the U.S. government use in a nuclear test. The mannequins were placed inside House No. 1 at the Nevada Proving Grounds and subjected to the blast effects of the sixteen-kiloton shot codenamed Annie, which was part of Operation Upshot-Knothole. The images below show up on all sorts of websites identified with all sorts of tests, but these come from the Nevada Department of Energy website and are identified there as the actual House No. 1 that
was blown to smithereens along with Hillman’s mannequins (those may seem in strangely good shape to you, but keep in mind that fiberglass melts at about 37,000°F, whereas human flesh burns at about 120°F and melts shortly thereafter).
For an interesting indication of the bizarro world some people lived in during the nuclear 1950s, consider this quote from Hillman concerning the use of mannequins (which, by the way, he dressed differently as a tribute to American individuality and choice): “The outcome of this test is unpredictable, but the results of the evaluation may be a powerful factor in deciding fashion trends in the years to come.” That’s right—he thought he could learn from the test how to make nuclear blast-resistant clothes, market them, and make money selling them. Kind of makes you wonder whether humans are simply destined to fail on this planet, doesn’t it? Nuclear test Annie occurred at 5:20 a.m. today in 1953.
Note: We got an e-mail, and the question was whether the mannequin photo was really made after the test, or before. If the photo were larger you’d be able to see that the mannequins are, in fact, a bit battered. Of course, that raises the question of whether they’re radioactive. Being the morbid guys we are, we did check historical records on Hillman Lee to see if maybe he developed health problems, but there’s nothing on him. Presumably he made a fortune on his nuke resistant garments and retired to a life of quiet but comfortable obscurity. Or not.
This debris cloud was generated yesterday in 1952 by the nuclear blast codenamed Dog, which was part of Operation Tumbler-Snapper, a series of tests that occurred at the Nevada Test Site that year. The people you see in the image are just a few of the 2,100 marines who observed the explosion. Last month Chatham House released a sobering nuclear study showing that there have been thirteen incidents since 1962 that qualify as “near use” of nuclear weapons. In two of those—the famed Oleg Penkovsky incident and the less famous but more serious Stanislaw Petrov incident—nuclear holocaust may have been averted only because individuals disobeyed orders. Chatham House also details many instances of “sloppy practice.” Two examples: President Jimmy Carter once left the U.S. nuclear launch codes in a suit that was taken to the dry cleaners, and in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was shot, his bloody pants containing the launch codes ended up in the hands of FBI agents who had no authorization to possess them. There are instances of sloppy practice from as recently as 2013. If you’re in the mood for some sobering reading, the report is here.
Above is an image of a downed blimp, or barrage balloon, that was floated above the Nevada Test Site to measure the effects of the pressure wave from a nuclear blast. The test was a nineteen kiloton detonation codenamed Stokes, part of the series Operation Plumbbob, and was set off about five miles away from the blimp. That was today in 1957.
The numbers in reverse on the top photo tell you the date—today, 1955. The occasion was yet another nuclear test in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas, and the image captured the glow that had filtered all the way to downtown Los Angeles, more than 250 miles away. The blast that made all that light appears in the second image. The test was called Apple-2, and it was part of Operation Teapot, a fourteen blast series designed to examine potential tactics for ground forces under nuclear attack. We aren’t military experts, but we have a pretty good idea what the best tactics are—run like the Devil is chasing you. Come on now—tactics for infantry under nuclear attack? What would those be, really? Wear BluBlockers? Hide inside a fortress of hot dogs? Strategy our asses. We think the Army just liked blowing shit up.
At the Lop Nur test site located between the Taklamakan and Kuruktag deserts, the People’s Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon, codenamed 596 after the month of June 1959, which is when the program was initiated.
In response to a mass shooting in Dunblane, Scotland that kills 16 children, the British Conservative government announces a law to ban all handguns, with the exception .22 caliber target pistols. When Labor takes power several months later, they extend the ban to all handguns.
Pierre Laval, who was the premier of Vichy, France, which had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, is shot by a firing squad for treason. In subsequent years it emerges that Laval may have considered himself a patriot whose goal was to publicly submit to the Germans while doing everything possible behind the scenes to thwart them. In at least one respect he may have succeeded: fifty percent of French Jews survived the war, whereas in other territories about ninety percent perished.
In the U.S., in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther political party. The Panthers are active in American politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but eventually legal troubles combined with a schism over the direction of the party lead to its dissolution.
A U-2 spy plane flight over the island of Cuba produces photographs of Soviet nuclear missiles being installed. Though American missiles have been installed near Russia, the U.S. decides that no such weapons will be tolerated in Cuba. The resultant standoff brings the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. The crisis finally ends with a secret deal in which the U.S. removes its missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing the Cuban weapons.
After two months of evading police and federal authorities, Angela Davis is arrested in New York City by the FBI. She had been sought in connection with a kidnapping and murder because one of the guns used in the crime had been bought under her name. But after a trial a jury agreed that owning the weapon did not automatically make her complicit in the crimes.
