#Oppenheimer feared nuclear annihilation – and only a chance pause by a Soviet submarine officer kept it from happening in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as it gave him time to rethink before firing his nuclear torpedo/.
“World War III was very likely averted as a result of a brief delay in time caused by a sailor who happened to be stuck in the right place at the right time..."
January 27th is the National Day of Remembrance for America’s Downwinders in the USA. These are people who lived downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test site, and were exposed to radioactive fallout. Much of that fallout remains radioactive and is now embedded into the ecosystem.
The US government has paid a token compensation to a minuscule portion of this community through #RECA.
I am a historian of nuclear science & technology at Hiroshima Peace Inst & Grad School of Peace Studies. My book Nuclear bodies: the global hibakusha (Yale 2022) surveys harm from #nuclear production, weapon testing, & reactor accidents across the globe, & medical models that obscure harm from fallout particles.
Collecting oral histories in 20+ countries , I examine how communities, families and interior psychology suffer via exposures.
I track nuclear #colonialism (selecting the irradiated) arguing the #ColdWar was a limited nuclear war against these populations.
I also explore our relationship to our HL nuclear waste, asserting it is how our descendants will know us. Our choices now reveal our lack of consideration of the 1000s of generations of living beings for whom this waste is already a part of their world.
Previous life: l was a chef & worked w/ #organic food
As Congress considers payments to victims of Cold War-era nuclear contamination in the St. Louis region, people who were targeted for secret government testing from that same time period believe they’re due compensation, too.
Today in Labor History October 8, 1965: The Indonesian military, led by future dictator Suharto, began torturing and massacring thousands of "suspected" Communists, leading ultimately to the overthrow of leftist President Sukarno. Other targets of the murders were members of the Gerwani women’s movement, trade unionists, ethnic Javanese Abangan, ethnic Chinese, atheists, teachers, students, and alleged leftists in general. The U.S. embassy provided the death squads with the names of suspected “communists.” Intelligence agencies from the U.S., U.K., and Australia provided anti-communist propaganda, as well as military and logistical aid. Overall, the genocide (1965-1966) led to 500,000 to 1.2 million civilian deaths and 1.5 million imprisoned. A top-secret CIA report from 1968 called the massacres "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s." Nevertheless, Western media either downplayed the events, or celebrated them. Suharto remained in power until 1998, continuing to imprison, torture and slaughter workers and civilians. He also presided over the East Timor Genocide of up to 300,000 people in the 1970’s.
Cold War satellite images reveal nearly 400 Roman forts
Declassified Cold War-era spy satellite images have led researchers to identify 396 previously unknown Roman forts in Syria and Iraq. The research points towards a vibrant network supporting trade and cultural exchange rather than a rigid border defense system...
🧵 I'm browsing 'Zivilverteidigung,' the Swiss national defence book from 1969.
The Swiss took their nuclear defence very seriously. Many buildings (my own included) are still built today with nuclear bunkers in the cellars.
The UK's own 'Protect & Survive' booklet was 30 pages, whereas, the Swiss 'Zivilverteidigung' is 320 pages.
Great graphic design, too. Here's a thread of random images. #coldwar#switzerland#graphicdesign#illustration
As you wrap your head around particles from wildfires creating risk 1000s of km away, and even on the other side of the world, use this to understand how radioactive fallout particles from nuclear weapon "tests" spread radioactive particles all around the world.
They have been found on every continent, at the poles, in the Mariana Trench, even in #Hiroshima & #Nagasaki.
This is the fallout cloud from the #Bravo test in the Marshall Islands in 1954, taken 15 minutes after detonation. H-bomb tests brought these particulates high into the upper atmosphere where they circled the Earth before "falling out" all across the globe. Many remain dangerous for 100s or 1000s of years.
On #ThisDayInHistory in 1889, #CharlesChaplin was born into #poverty in London. He never forgot his origins, and spoke out for the poor and for #socialism, and against war and fear, all his life. The US showed its McCarthyite face by driving him into exile during the #ColdWar.
Today (March 1) is the 70th anniversary of the #Bravo Test, the largest nuclear weapon test ever conducted by the US, on #Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was a radiological disaster that resulted in the irradiation and forced displacement of whole communities.
Here is an article I wrote about how Bravo put the word #fallout into our lexicon.
"The Bravo Test and the Death and Life of the Global Ecosystem in the Early Anthropocene"
“If it had not been for the accident of my birth, I would have been an anti-Semite.”
-Henry Kissinger
He may be a German Jew who fled the Nazis, but he has allied himself with the same forces who cheered Hitler on, who enabled him, who have encouraged and supported Hitler-imitators throughout the world.
>1million dead from U.S. bombs, napalm & pesticides in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos during his tenure as Secretary of State (along with 30,000 mostly working-class U.S. citizens)
*Torture & murder of tens of thousands of Chileans under Pinochet, after the Kissinger-U.S. supported overthrow of Allende
*Operation Condor, to hunt down & slaughter revolutionaries throughout Latin America
*Indonesian invasion of East Timor & genocide (1975), which killed up to 300,000
*Military slaughter & genocide in Bangladesh (1971) which killed up to 3 million people
*Support for dictatorships in Spain, Portugal, Greece, S Arabia, Iran.
*Support for right-wing insurgencies in Africa
#POTUS Joe Biden said on Fri the US will impose costs for Russia's "appalling attempts" to use Americans as bargaining chips in a stmnt to mark the 1-yr anniversary of WSJ reporter Gershkovich's arrest in Russia.
Gershkovich, 32, was the 1st US #journalist arrested on spying charges in Russia since the #ColdWar when he was detained by the #FSB on Mar 29 last yr.
"Unstable nuclear-waste dams threaten fertile Central Asia heartland"
"Dams holding vast amounts of uranium mine tailings above the fertile Fergana valley in Central Asia are unstable, threatening a possible Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster if they collapse that would make the region uninhabitable, studies have revealed."
"Radioactive Objects Found at San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Raise New Concerns"
"The discoveries raise fresh questions about the city’s plans to build thousands of homes on one of the nation’s largest and most polluted Superfund sites amid ongoing cleanup efforts."
The title of this film is very misleading. It makes it sound like a low-budget 50s scifi, but this is actually a very well made movie. I think it's on par with The Day the Earth Stood Still (1952), except this film had a lot more special effects. They used a combination of stop action and other practical effects as well as post processing techniques.
The guy who did the special effects on this film, Ray Harryhauser, invented a technique called Dynamation, a special type of stop action effect. He went on to work on the 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1956) which is probably one of the most well-known stop action/live action films of the era. But this film uses a wide variety of techniques as well as stop action.
The writing and acting are also top-notch. The actors weren't big stars but they were accomplished character actors. It has a fully developed plot and the dialogue was well written. Also, they got a lot of the science facts right on this one, at least more than usual for a Hollywood scifi. They even tried to explain special relativity, incorrectly of course, but they tried.
I highly recommend this film to anyone who likes old science fiction movies.
It’s just unfortunate that they gave this film such a cheap-sounding name. They even released it as a double-feature with The Werewolf. (I guess film marketing has improved since then as well as special effects. 😆 )
an ugly movie poster with orange and white headlines, muted colors, with images of flying saucers that are shooting rays to the ground and robot creatures walking around, the large headlines say flying saucers attack! warning! take cover! earth vs the flying saucers, small headlines say flying saucers invade our planet: washington, london, paris, moscow, take cover!, a smaller inset image of a man and woman looking scared and holding each other.
The war in #Ukraine has put to the test two strongly-held tenets of the #ColdWar: the strength of #Russia's Army and the strength of #USA's commitment to its allies.
A potential war in #Europe was supposed to be decided by which one would have been the strongest.
We witnessed how the Russian army wasn't really so strong: but what about the strength of US commitment?
What is stronger?
From my Cold War primary source shelves: J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit (1958) replete with high school student scholarship contest! #history#ColdWar#books#America#Communism
Government should pay compensation for secretive Cold War-era testing, St. Louis victims say (apnews.com)
As Congress considers payments to victims of Cold War-era nuclear contamination in the St. Louis region, people who were targeted for secret government testing from that same time period believe they’re due compensation, too.