Interesting Drug

In the West, Fallout 3’s advertising campaign tried to keep things classy. So it is in Japan, with the release of these Fallout 3 shirts designed by…Famitsu.

Yes, the magazine/website Famitsu. There are three designs to choose from, each coming in two colourways, and the best part is, some of them keep with the radioactive theme by glowing in the dark.

Before you lunge for your credit card, though, know that thanks to the current economic climate (and its effect on exchange rates), they’re going for around $45 (plus shipping) each.

Fallout 3 [ebten]

[…]

The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim.

[…]

I am looking to make a music playlist that recaptures that ‘89 cold war, fall of communism feel. Think Scorpions - Wind of Change.

I’m living in Eastern Europe for the first time, a whole bunch of friends and family are coming over for a special occasion and I really want to create a playlist for a night of drinking in an old communist apartment. I’m not so interested in traditional folk music or patriotic songs…but popular music with subject matter relating to the cold war or the fall of communism (or Russia and Eastern Europe in general). I don’t mind how cheesy they are and the song doesn’t necessarily have to be western.

To Begin:
Scorpions - Wind of Change
Elton John - Nikita
David Hasselhoff - I’m Looking for Freedom
Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhatten [for the Berlin mention]
Nena - 99 Luftballons

Not Interested in:
The Beatles - Back in the U.S.S.R
Novelty songs - e.g anything by Weird Al

There were these nuclear songs previously, but maybe a bit too nucleary for me.

[…]

Burlington Underground Cold War City:

A 35 acre subterranean Cold War City that lies 1000 feet beneath Corsham. Built in the late 50s this massive city complex was designed by Government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike. A former Bath stone quarry the city, code named Burlington, was to be the site of the main Emergency Government War Headquarters - the hub of the Country’s alternative seat of power outside London.

Over a kilometre in length, and boasting over 60 miles of roads. Blast proof and completely self-sufficient the secret underground site could accommodate up to 6,000 people, in complete isolation from the outside world, for up to three months.

The report (with lots more pictures) is from a blog about all kinds of underground things, created in support of the new movie City of Ember. The Burlington underground city was maintained until the 1980s, and finally decommissioned in 2005. Link -Thanks, Ashley!

[…]

Happy Trinity Day:

Happy Trinity Day: on this day in 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated in Alamogordo, in Los Alamos, NM. Celebrate with a mushroom pizza.

Don’t miss Ellen Klages’s award-winning Green Glass Sea, the best story ever written about trinitite (the radioactive green-glass “rocks” made from sand fused by the Trinity detonation) and remember, you can buy the stuff online!

With gallows humor, the Los Alamos physicists got up a betting pool on the possible yield of the bomb. Estimates ranged from zero to as high as 45,000 tons of TNT. Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938 for his work on nuclear fission, offered side odds on the bomb destroying all life on the planet.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, was under no illusions about what he and his fellow physicists had wrought. The effects of the blast, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, moved the intellectual Oppenheimer to quote from the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

More prosaically, Dr. Kenneth Bainbridge, site director of the Trinity test, said: “Now we are all sons-of-bitches.”

Link

(Thanks, Evan!)

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

[…]

Gallery: Nuclear Blasts Show Terrifying Power:

: Courtesy National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office

It was 63 years ago today that the United States detonated the very first atomic bomb. Three weeks later, the only two A-bombs dropped in warfare destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Many nuclear — and thermonuclear — bombs have been tested since. Here are some images.

Left:
Operation Upshot-Knothole, conducted at the Nevada Proving Ground between March 17 and June 4, 1953, consisted of 11 atmospheric tests: three airdrops, seven tower tests and one airburst. Upshot-Knothole involved the testing of new theories, using both fission and fusion devices.

House No. 1, located 3,500 feet from ground zero, was completely destroyed on the first day of testing. The elapsed time from the first picture to the last was 2⅔ seconds. The camera was completely enclosed in a 2-inch lead sheath as a protection against radiation. The only source of light was that from the detonation. Frame No. 1 (upper left) shows the house lighted by the blast. Frame No. 2 (upper right) shows the house on fire.

: Courtesy National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office

“The island of Elugelab is missing!” President Truman heard this short report from Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, following the “Mike shot,” conducted as part of Operation Ivy. Mike, which delivered 10.4 megatons, was the first full-fledged hydrogen bomb to be detonated. It vaporized the small islet of Elugelab in the Eniwetok Atoll.

: Courtesy National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office

Official observers view the Wasp Prime air drop at the Nevada Test Site on March 29, 1955. It was the second detonation of the day. Apple-1 came five hours earlier, marking the first time two nuclear devices were set off on the same day.

Operation Teapot consisted of 14 shots, or detonations, conducted during the first half of 1955. Teapot’s objective was to evaluate the tactical applications of a variety of devices for possible inclusion in the nuclear-weapons stockpile, as well as to study civil-defense requirements.

: Courtesy National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office

This base camp near Los Alamos, New Mexico, supported Project Trinity. The first atomic bomb in history was successfully tested nearby in July 1945. Trinity represented the culmination of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort to build and detonate an atomic device. Within 24 days of this test, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were laid waste by atomic bombs.

: Photo: Corbis

The first atomic bomb is readied for testing near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945.

: Photo: Corbis

J. Robert Oppenheimer, in white hat, and Gen. Leslie Groves, military commander of the Manhattan Project, examine the twisted wreckage that is all that remains of a 100-foot tower, winch and shack that held the first nuclear weapon before its July 16, 1945, detonation. On the far right is Victor Weisskopf of the Manhattan Project’s Theoretical Division.

: Photo: Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum/Corbis

The exact moment of detonation at Nagasaki is captured in this remarkable photograph. Notice the three people in the foreground, as yet unaware that anything has happened. The destruction of Nagasaki followed that of Hiroshima by three days and compelled Japan to surrender, ending World War II.

: Photo: AP/Kyodo News/Hirofumi Kimata

Asa Takii, 114, Japan’s oldest woman, seen in this June 1998 picture, was a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. The blast killed her husband and family, but Takii survived despite being trapped in the rubble of her home for days before rescue came. She died at a nursing home at Kurahashi Island near Hiroshima on July 31, 1998.

: Photo: Corbis

July 1, 1946, in the Marshall Islands: A mushroom cloud erupts in the North Pacific Ocean over the Bikini Lagoon during the first of the two detonations of Operation Crossroads. The series studied the effects of nuclear radiation on large ships, and the United States assembled a fleet of 90 obsolete naval vessels, including a few captured German and Japanese warships, for the test. Several ships can be seen here, silhouetted against the blast.

[…]

July 16, 1945: Trinity Blast Opens Atomic Age:

1945: The first atomic bomb is tested successfully at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in a remote section of desert near Los Alamos, New Mexico. The instant the bomb detonated at 5:30 a.m. that Monday, the atomic age was born, and the world changed forever.

The Trinity test, as it was known, was the culmination of the American effort to win the race against Germany (and, ultimately, the Soviet Union) in building an atomic bomb. A mere three weeks after the test, the United States used atomic bombs to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But prior to the 16th, none of those involved in the project knew if they had built a devastating new weapon or a spectacular dud.

With gallows humor, the Los Alamos physicists got up a betting pool on the possible yield of the bomb. Estimates ranged from zero to as high as 45,000 tons of TNT. Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938 for his work on nuclear fission, offered side odds on the bomb destroying all life on the planet.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, was under no illusions about what he and his fellow physicists had wrought. The effects of the blast, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, moved the intellectual Oppenheimer to quote from the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”

More prosaically, Dr. Kenneth Bainbridge, site director of the Trinity test, said: “Now we are all sons-of-bitches.”

The scientists and military men who were at the Trinity site when the detonation occurred were staggered by what they saw. T. F. Farrell, a brigadier general on the staff of Major Gen. Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project’s military commander, wrote:

The blast, which sent a mushroom cloud boiling 38,000 feet into the sky, was both visible and audible for hundreds of miles around. The heat generated at the blast point was described as being 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun. Even at 10 miles removed from ground zero, witnesses said the resulting heat wave was like standing directly in front of a roaring fireplace.

While Oppenheimer said he never regretted helping develop the bomb, he did have second thoughts about the way the United States used it against Japan. Lamont Lansing’s book, Day of Trinity, quotes Oppenheimer, then near the end of his life:

Source: Trinity Atomic Web Site

[…]

Post-apocalypse without the militias: The Outquisition:

WorldChanging’s Alex Steffen and I sat down last week for a cup of coffee and got to talking about post-apocalyptic life. I noticed that while there’s a whole ton of stories — and people who emulate them — about heavily armed survivalists bravely holding off the twilight of civilization after the Big One, there are damned few stories about super-networked post-apocalyptic Peace Corps who respond to the Great Fall by figuring out how to put it all back together. I even came up with a name for it: the Outquisition; the opposite of the Inquisition — missionaries who come to your town to remind you of how awesome it can all be, leave behind a bunch of rad, life-improving systems and tools, and generally get on with the business of being happy, well-fed and peaceful.

Alex wrote up a great post about this and 24 hours later, some WorldChanging readers created Outquisition.org. I’m not sure what they’ll do there, but in my dreams, they’re off building a non-secret society of emergency-preparedness Nice People who think that the response to catastrophe isn’t lifeboat rules and militias, but humanitarian aid and kick-ass tools.

What would it be like, we wondered, if folks who knew tools and innovation left the comfy bright green cities and traveled to the dead mall suburban slums, rustbelt browntowns and climate-smacked farm communities and started helping the locals get the tools they needed. We imagined that it would need an almost missionary fervor, something like the Inquisition (which largely destroyed knowledge) in reverse, a crusade of open sharing, or as Cory promptly dubbed it, the Outquisition.

Imagine these folks like this passing out free textbooks, running holistic programs for kids, creating local knowledge management systems, launching microfinance projects, mobilebanking and complementary currencies. Helping rural landowners apply climate foresight and farm biodiversity. Building cheap, smart, quality housing for displaced people (not to mention better refugee camps), or an Open Architecture Network for cheap informal rehabs of run-down suburban housing. Hacking together DIY windmills and ad hoc smart grids, communication systems, water treatment systems — and getting really good atadaptive reuses of outdated infrastructure. In other words, these folks would be redistributing the future at a furious clip.

Link to Alex’s post, Link to Outquisition homepage

(Thanks, Alex!)

[…]

Bethesda to host post-apocalyptic film festival in August:

Filed under: Culture, PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360

Fallout 3 developer Bethesda announced via press release that it is hosting (alongside American Cinematheque and Geek Monthly) a post-apocalyptic film festival in honor of the upcoming game. The two night even starts Friday, August 22 at Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA.

Three films will be shown each night. For Friday, August 22: Wizards, Damnation Alley, A Boy and His Dog. For Saturday, August 23 (The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, Twelve Monkeys), both nights starting at 7:00 pm. We think they’re missing a few good choices — namely, Six String Samurai, Mad Max and The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

The real kicker is a “special Fallout 3 giveaway” for every attendee. We’re expecting a poster or tote bag, but who knows? Maybe Bethesda is offering free Rad Away for all. Tickets go on sale July 25.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

[…]

Apocalyptic reading?:

Bookfilter: I am currently entranced with books about the end (or near end) of the world/civilization. But lately I’ve been ending up with some real junk. Can anyone recommend good books on this topic? Examples inside.

The good books (IMO) I’ve read so far related to this are: "The Road," "Cell," "World War Z," "The Stand," "Phantom," and have been searching for a copy of a new compilation "Wastelands." In searching for other books on this topic, I have been perusing random Zombie books, which have been pretty terrible, though it did prompt me to get a library card. (Unfortunately, the librarian was of no help with this.) Sorting through Amazon’s list and google has availed me much of the aforementioned garbage, but it could be I’m just terrible at searching.

Era or particular genre is unimportant, and any help with this would be greatly appreciated, as I will be having some extended free time on my hands soon.

…

Recommend me some good post-apocalyptic movies and books:

I have just found out I’m a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction books. Somehow I like the idea of an individual or small group of survivors almost alone in the world trying to find out what the hell happened to the planet and fighting for their survival. What are some good books and movies the hive mind can recommend?

…

Hiroshima bomb pilot dies aged 92:

Paul Tibbets, the man who led the crew that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, died in Columbus, Ohio today. He was 92.

The five-ton “Little Boy” bomb was dropped on the morning of 6 August 1945, killing about 140,000 Japanese, with many of them dying later.

On the 60th anniversary of the bombing, the three surviving crew members of the Enola Gay - named after Tibbet’s mother - said they had “no regrets.”

Link

Sensible Decision: Buy Defcon, Get Uplink:

“Defcon, in case you missed it, is spreading its digitally-distributed wings and is heading to stores. It’s worth picking up on its own merits, but to increase its allure Introversion have decided to bundle Uplink, their equally-rad hacking game, along with it.

Can’t argue with that value. Well…you could, but then I’d remind you Uplink is the single-best thing to do with hacking that doesn’t involve Dan Ackroyd and you’d have nothin’. Luke Plunkett

Retail Defcon to include Introversion’s Uplink [CVG]

”

doomsday clock redesign:

“
the Doomsday Clock, the graphic symbol of the world’s proximity to nuclear annihilation, has been (minimally?) redesigned. the clock is the emblem of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the advocacy group formed in 1945 by scientists from the Manhattan Project. the redesign coincides with the group’s decision to move the clock forward from 7 to 5 minutes before midnight, or metaphorical doomsday.

see also bar countdown & ambient clock & colhour clock & dot clock & last clock.

[link: pentagram.com]

”

Jan. 7, 1953: The Big Boom:

“It’s the Cold War, and Harry Truman checks out of the White House with a parting gift for the Russians. Compiled by Tony Long.”

Nuclear Water Wonderland: theme park on reactor site:

“Xeni Jardin:

Following up on an earlier BoingBoing post about a Disney theme park designer’s macabre joke-proposal to build an amusement park on Three Mile Island, BB reader Eur van Andel says:

Reality is always stranger than fiction: The Kalkar nuclear fast breeder reactor was never started and was bought by a Dutch entrepreneur who turned it into an amusement park: Link (in english).

The URL translates as ‘nuclear water wonderland’. More on why it failed: Link.

Bottom line: it was built around the time of the Three Mile Island meltdown and did not have its nuclear materials yet when Chenobyl exploded. It was built for 3.5 billion euros and sold for 2.5 million euros. All of it German taxpayers’ money

Awesome. On the promotional website, along with rates and recreation options, this cheerful text:

Because this nuclear power station has never been put into use, is this whole complex guaranteed free of radiation!

There’s yet another amusement park on an abandoned nuclear reactor site (this is another part of the same park), mentioned in our earlier post (screengrab below): Link to ‘Kernie’s Family Park.’

Reader comment: Carsten Kaefert says,

I’m quite fascinated that by reading bOINGbOING I actually found a sight pretty much in my neighborhood. Guess that is what’s meant by ‘global village’. But when surfing through the linked pages I found a little misunderstanding in your article: There aren’t two post-nuclear themeparks around. It’s just one, as ‘Kernies Familienpark’ is a part of ‘Nuclear Water Wonderland’ (’Kernwasser-Wunderland’). At least both of them are located on the remains of the Kalkar nuclear facility.

Stephen Dennis says,

In the nuclear theme park theme, and alternative uses of a nuclear park,
here is a story by Austin Meyer,
author of the awesome x-plane,
visiting an abandoned nuclear power
station which contains - no kidding -
the set from the movie The Abyss.

Long - but fun to read and the
pictures are priceless. Link.

Previously on BB:

Biographical article of J. Robert Oppenheimer:

“Mark Frauenfelder:
The New Atlantis has a long, interesting article about J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project.

It was Oppenheimer whom the public lionized as the brains behind the bomb; who agonized about the devastation his brilliance had helped to unleash; who hoped that the very destructiveness of the new ‘gadget,’ as the bombmakers called their invention, might make war obsolete; and whose sometime Communist fellow-traveling and opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb—a weapon a thousand times more powerful than the bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki—brought about his political disgrace and downfall, which of course have marked him in the eyes of some as all the more heroic, a visionary persecuted by warmongering McCarthyite troglodytes. His legacy, of course, is far more complicated.

Link

”

Alabama Atomic Nuked Veteran License Plate:

“

From the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs:

The commemorative tags for Atomic Veterans NUKED are for veterans of the U.S. armed forces exposed to dangerous levels of radiation due to atomic bomb and weapons testing from 1946 to 1962, the Veteran Tag Program for Vietnam veterans, Korean War veterans, WW II veterans, veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, and Veterans of Desert Shield/Storm. This commemorative tag fee shall have an annual fee of $3.00 plus the normal tag and issuance fee and ad valorem taxes.

That’s right—take a nuke blast to the face and they still make you pay three bucks to commemorate your boiled-off skin.

”

Fallout Shelter Handbook from 1962:

“Mark Frauenfelder:
Ward Jenkins scanned a few pages from his copy of the Fallout Shelter Handbook from 1962

From 1962, deep in the midst of the Cold War. I found this amongst piles of musty smelling magazines and articles at a booth at the Inman Park Arts Festival several years back. The cover is classic: your average white American family enjoying life as best as they can after an atomic attack. What I love the most about it is that Mom is in her day dress, apron and all, preparing dinner, and Dad is relaxing in his jacket, smoking a pipe, having just finished reading the liner notes to something by the Ray Coniff Singers, probably.

The rest of the handbook is some interesting stuff if you dig construction how-to’s — this could’ve been sold at a Home Depot if they had them at the time. There are some very interesting ads in the handbook, too. Check out the rest of the images I’ve scanned to see more.

Link

”

atomic age poster art:

“Do you know of a good place a guy could buy an atomic age pro-nuclear propaganda poster around here?

I’m trying to buy that special nuclear engineer in my life a super-cool 1950’s era propaganda poster in support of nuclear power/bombs/rockets…whatever. She’s got a fetish for modern art, so i’m trying to find something which mixes the svelt form of modern art with the horrifically naive idolization of the atom. However, i’ve come up dry in searching for atomic age art, nuclear posters, and the other general keywords that come to mind. Do you know of a specific organization or artist that might have this type of stuff? help me obi wan kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

Nuclear Strike = Dead, No Cellphone Replacement:

“Our even more jaded friends at the Consumerist received an interesting tip regarding big cellphone insurance provider Asurion’s exclusion of coverage. This is direct from the policy:

L. Any Loss or damage caused by or through or in consequence, directly or indirectly, of Nuclear Hazard, meaning any weapon employing atomic fission or fusion; or nuclear reaction or radiation or radioactive contamination from any other cause; but we will pay for direct physical Loss caused by resulting fire, if the fire would be covered under this Certificate.

Great. So while my ghost is growing a third eye, it will need to write the insurance company arguing that my phone was burned in a fire after the nuclear explosion hit. - Mark Wilson

In Case Of Nuclear Attack, Your Cellphone Insurance Is Void [consumerist]

”