People living on glass planets shouldn't detonate nukes.
Are we still here? Haven’t been obliterated, leaving only a few hearty survivors living savage feral existences? Good. We loathe the flavor of human flesh, even if it’s well cooked. Above you see two unusual photos of the U.S. nuclear test Kingfish, part of the Fishbowl series of tests that took place at Johnston Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean. The 400 kiloton bomb was detonated at high altitude, provided electro magnetic pulse data, and was another step along the road to the obliteration-cooked-human-meat scenario. We post these images, by the way, because nuclear fear was such an integral part of the post-pulp era. We just talked about it last week in relation to science fiction films. Check here. The photos are from today in 1962.
Arrrgh! It's so frustrating that there's no big and tall men's clothing shop in this town!
Film historians and sociologists alike claim mid-century sci-fi films were largely about Cold War anxiety and fear of nuclear annihilation. Well, probably. There was also an interest in using improved special effects in order to advance storytelling possibilities. Hollywood made about five hundred sci-fi movies between 1948 and 1962, and the sci-fi story form, even before the Cold War, often involved invasion or technological disaster.
But many post-nuclear movies actually were about nuclear fear. Godzilla, for example. And the U.S. film The Day the Earth Caught Fire, about two nuclear tests pushing the planet toward the Sun. Susan Sontag once wrote that, “Alongside the hopeful fantasy of moral simplification and international unity embodied in the science fiction films, lurk the deepest anxieties about contemporary existence.” So we’ll buy it.
That brings us to Bert I. Gordon’s schlock sci-fi classic The Amazing Colossal Man, which is about an army colonel played by Glenn Langan who’s accidentally exposed to the pulse of a plutonium bomb, after which he grows to sixty feet in height and eighteen-thousand pounds. Thankfully the army is good at “expandable sarongs,” as the movie puts it, though there’s no word on whether they also built enormous toilets.
Standing by Langan’s side through thick and thicker is loyal fiancée Cathy Downs, trying to be supportive as he slowly loses his marbles. Army eggheads eventually find a cure, but not before Langan runs away into the Nevada desert, headed for Las Vegas. They chase him down in order to inject him using a humongous syringe containing the first dose of a two-stage cure, but things aren’t as easy in practice as they are on paper.
And the same could be said about filmmaking, but even if this one will induce occasional smirks among viewers, it must be noted that it was a box office success, pulling in four times its production budget. That budget? $138,000. Pretty low, and it shows. The projection effects required to make Langan sixty feet tall worked, more or less, but everything else screams shoestring.
In a sign of the film’s relative quality, it was skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000, with a better result than the original. But the movie fits Sontag’s thesis perfectly. As she noted, “Science fiction films may also be described as a popular mythology for the contemporary negative imagination about the impersonal.” The Amazing Colossal Man is negative in the extreme, and it exudes terror of the impersonal. It premiered today in 1957.
This image ranks as one of the more unusual shots of a nuclear explosion. It shows the high altitude atmospheric test codenamed Orange, which was part of a two-test pairing codenamed Operation Newsreel, which was in turn part of the broad series codenamed Operation Hardtack. These warhawks and their codenames, right? The test took place today in 1958 and was a 3.8 megaton blast lifted to an altitude of approximately twenty-seven miles above Johnston Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean by a Redstone Missile. The result was among the first well-studied nuclear electromagnetic pulses ever produced. You see a wider shot of the test below.
There’s been increased talk over the last few years about the weaponization of space, however that bridge was crossed a long, long time ago by the U.S. and Soviet Union, with the U.S. getting the ball rolling in 1958 with a series of tests secretly conducted over the South Atlantic Ocean. The above photos, which were made from Honolulu, Hawaii, and the one below made from a surveillance aircraft, and show the U.S. nuclear test known as Starfish Prime. It was one of five explosions comprising Operation Fishbowl, which itself was folded within the encompassing set of tests known as Operation Dominic. The detonation took place in space at an altitude of about 250 miles, and was launched from the North Pacific Ocean’s Johnston Atoll atop a Thor ballistic missile. That was today in 1962.
1-2-0-0, party over, oops out of time. So tonight we're gonna party like it's 11:59.
The Doomsday Clock is currently set at ninety seconds to midnight. That’s not good. Here in the palatial Pulp Intl. metroplex we tend not to worry too much. For one, we’re too focused on enjoying life. Second, we’ve always maintained that the only possible benefit to the ridiculous proliferation of the ultra wealthy is that none of them want to be incinerated, and they possibly have influence on countries’ policies to a greater extent than at any previous time in history. On the other hand, humans are generally pretty stupid, running geopolitics like high school bullies, and there are many people who crave obliteration because of their bronze age religious myths. Some of those people are influential too. So, in these moments when the spinning top of human civilization threatens to careen right off the tiny table on which it’s perched, the above photo is a reminder to live your life to the fullest. It shows the nuclear test Grable, which was part of the series of tests nicknamed Operation Upshot-Knothole, and occurred at the Nevada Test Site today in 1953. They fired a 280 millimeter nuclear shell into the desert with the so-named M65 Atomic Cannon, detonating the explosive aerially, resulting in a 15 kiloton blast. And they proved… Well, we can’t be sure about that. Multiple methods of doomsday delivery, possible delusions about contained nuclear warfare, etc. Dance, everyone. Just dance.
Mid-century sex symbol provides inspiration for nuclear erotica.
This unusual piece of art was made by a French artist named Jacques Puiseux, whose work we’ve shared here before. We happened to be in contact with him recently, and he sent this our way to enjoy. He painted it back in 1999, and it suggests Brigitte Bardot and the French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, combined to create “a graphic pun of a sex bomb.” Appropriately, he calls it “Vénus Atomica.” We dig it, and Jacques’ other art too, which you can see by clicking his keywords below. Just a little something different for you this lovely Thursday. Also, Jacques has a Flickr gallery here.
Hey, should we put another log or two on the— Actually, never mind. It's going pretty good now.
The Stokes nuclear test was part of the extensive series of blasts code-named Operation Plumbbob conducted at the Nevada Test Site, as the U.S. continued its race with the Soviet Union, seeking higher yielding, more efficient, and more specifically functional bombs. Stokes was a nineteen kiloton blast detonated with the use of an aerial balloon suspended at 1,500 feet. The result was one of the most reproduced photos of the nuclear testing age. From today in 1957.
It's a type of animal to which the normal rules of logic don't seem to apply.
Above is a photo of the nuclear test Mohawk, part of a seventeen blast series designated Redwing. The 360 kiloton Mohawk took place on Enewetak or Eniwetok Atoll. The first few milliseconds of a nuclear blast tend to produce forms like the one seen here, a bulbous shape with vaporizing guy wires that resemble stubby legs. To us, these shapes look a bit like tardigrades, those microscopic life forms found everywhere on Earth from jungle to arctic to sea bottom, and which are so resilient and difficult to kill they can survive extreme high and low pressures, radiation, dehydration, starvation, and exposure to the vacuum of space.
Similarly, nuclear weapons seem able to survive anything, though their existence is proof of the folly of man. While we can certainly accept that we aren’t an intelligent enough species to forgo the creation of armageddon causing weapons, the U.S. and Russia both have more than 5,000 nukes, an amount at which balance of power becomes meaningless. Weapon 4,999 is not the one that makes a nation secure. Nor is weapon 999. Military sources claim missile interception systems work at a rate of 80%, while arms control advocates say the real number is closer to 50%. In either case, in a full scale nuclear exchange hundreds of nukes would reach their targets.
The moment you see this photo you know something bizarre and unique to the 1950s is going on. In what was conceived by Air Force brains as a public relations event, today in 1957 these five men (and the photographer) voluntarily located themselves beneath a nuclear detonation to demonstrate that atomic weapons were suitable for use over civilian populations. Yes, we know—if they don’t kill people what’s the point? Like we said, bizarre and unique to the ’50s. The U.S. would later design a neutron bomb that was meant to kill only people and leave buildings and infrastructure intact, which makes sense in upside-down military world, but not killing people? We’re baffled.
The explosion, which was code-named John, was part of the Operation Plumbbob series of twenty-nine tests, and took place over Yucca Flat in Nevada at an altitude of 18,000 feet or thereabouts (some sources say 15,000). It was the first and only usage of a device known as the AIR-2 Genie, an airplane launched, rocket powered, unguided nuclear missile.
We have no problem admitting they would have lost us at unguided. We wouldn’t even be in the same time zone: “Okay, everyone ready? Good, we’re counting down from— Hey, where’d those pulp guys go?” Did the test actually prove nuclear weapons were safe? They thought so. All five of the above guinea pigs lived for years beyond detonation day, but in a (not) shocking plot twist, all eventually died of cancer. The photographer, who was stationed a few feet higher than the other men, was incinerated. Oh, nope—actually he died of cancer too. You can watch the test at this link.
The greatest trick he ever pulled was convincing the world he was national defense.
Are we still here? We haven’t been reduced to incandescent plasma yet? We’re continually amazed by that fact. But let’s never be complacent. The danger is ever-present. As we’ve mentioned before, nuclear weapons are part of the unseen—or sometimes seen—backdrop to a fair amount of mid-century crime literature and at least one celebrated film noir, which is why we periodically focus on them. Above is one of the most manifestly revealing nuclear test photos ever made. It was produced today in 1952 during a blast code-named Fox, and captures the essence of what atomic weapons really are—a demonic force unleashed that can’t be shoved back into its pit.
American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.
1963—Profumo Denies Affair
In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.
1978—Karl Wallenda Falls to His Death
World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.
2006—Swedish Spy Stig Wennerstrom Dies
Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.
1963—Alcatraz Closes
The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.
1916—Einstein Publishes General Relativity
German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. Among the effects of the theory are phenomena such as the curvature of space-time, the bending of rays of light in gravitational fields, faster than light universe expansion, and the warping of space time around a rotating body.
