The Horrifying Hollywood Movie That Determined U.S. Nuclear Policy

Operation Ivy Provoked Such Controversy That Future Nuclear Test Films Were Kept Secret From the Public

The Horrifying Hollywood Movie About Thermonuclear War That Determined U.S. | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

On a hot June day in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sat down in the cool confines of a White House screening room to watch a horrifying movie. Produced by government-backed Hollywood filmmakers, it recounted the recent test of an American thermonuclear bomb in the South Pacific. Part documentary, part disaster pic, Operation Ivy featured Hollywood actor Reed Hadley and footage of the complete annihilation of a Pacific island as large as Washington, D.C.

Eisenhower was stunned. But there was one thing he knew for sure after watching it: all …

by Kevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman | February 2, 2020

Everyone Should Know That a Nuclear Bomb Can Incinerate Their Neighborhood in 2.5 Seconds

The Better We All Understand These Weapons’ Power, the Less Likely Governments Are to Use Them

by Paul Carroll | May 14, 2019

I usually try to have fun at social gatherings, but almost inevitably someone who knows what I do for my “day job” asks me about nuclear weapons. “What’s up with …

A Half Century Later, the Cuban Missile Crisis Haunts My Dreams

But as a Child My Fighter Pilot Dad Was My Nuclear Bomb-Smashing Superman

By Karen BJORNEBY | February 13, 2017

On a Tuesday morning in mid-October 1962, my father received a phone call ordering him to fly from where we lived, Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base outside Kansas City, Missouri, to …

I Tried Writing This in the Time It Would Take a Russian Missile to Hit Washington—I Didn’t Finish

Measuring an Unfathomable Nuclear Menace in Minutes and Decades

By J. Peter Scoblic | September 26, 2016

Zócalo asked J. Peter Scoblic to write about the Cold War’s threat of nuclear annihilation for no more than 30 minutes, roughly the amount of time it would have taken …

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