1953 ... bulls-eye on D.C.!
... it's 1953 and the Russkies have the H-Bomb too. Time to redraw all the maps of annihilation!
... note: 5 million tons of TNT = 5 Megatons.
1958 ... Gahan Wilson
... hard for us today in the 21st century to fully conceive of what a leap the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile represented. Unstoppable. Minutes instead of hours to target.
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1972 ... ABM system construction- North Dakota
... man- that is a lot of ribar that's going into reinforced-concrete construction. You's think they expected it to survive... errr ... an Atomic Bomb.
1964 ... "Failsafe"
... "Fail Safe" Directed by Sidney Lument based on the 1962 novel by Eugen Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, exists as the bookend opposite to Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove". Both are masterpieces. Both deal with the subject of accidental nuclear war. "Fail Safe" is not a comedy.
Because of lawsuits and politics "FS" was released after "DS". For that reason, and the fact that "FS" is very disturbing and has an ending which is beyond depressing, it has never recieved the attention it deserves.
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1952 ... the bombers get through!
... meanwhile: after the evil traitor at the Air Force headquarters has sent our jet-fighters in the wrong direction; the Soviet bombers get through to New York ... with cataclysmic results!
... this looks like a lot more destruction than to be expected by a single 20 kiloton bomb such as the Soviets were fielding in 1952... but it is a comic book. All the better to give the baby-boomers decades of nightmares!
... color me radioactive!
... the nuclear weapons industry and the AEC get a special award for irony; after producing a children's coloring book to explain the wonderful world of atomic bombs!
1955 ... the alarming "Thunderscreech"
... putting a propeller on a jet-fighter isn't quite as stupid as it looks; but almost! Early jets were copious drinkers of JP-4 and it was thought that a combination of a Turbo-Prop and a Jet-Turbine might be a solution. But the Republic XF-84H, like many hybrids, was a design that incorporated the worst of both.
... another bizarre drawback was the excessive noise caused by the supersonic-propellers.
"Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic speeds, the outer
24–30 inches of the blades on the XF-84H's propeller traveled faster
than the speed of sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous
visible sonic boom that radiated laterally from the propellers for hundreds of yards. The shock wave
was actually powerful enough to knock a man down; an unfortunate crew
chief who was inside a nearby C-47 was severely incapacitated during a
30-minute ground run.
Coupled with the already considerable noise from the subsonic aspect of
the propeller and the dual turbines, the aircraft was notorious for
inducing severe nausea and headaches among ground crews.
In one report, a Republic engineer suffered a seizure after close range
exposure to the shock waves emanating from a powered-up XF-84H." -wiki
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1950 ... nobody left!
... although the first Hydrogen Bomb (Thermonuclear Weapon) was not tested until 1952, you can be sure that scary children's comic books were following the theory as closely as the KGB!.
... to infinity and beyond!
... it's the 1950's, those Russkie bombers are going to come streaming over the horizon any day now! Everybody and everything needs to get airborne as quick as possible. Including this lumbering Fairchild C-119 "Flying Boxcar". So bolt some JATO bottles on that baby and let her gooooooooooo!
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... this is a test!
... the Emergency Broadcast System
... personally I find the old-style continuous tone much more soothing and poetic than today's jarring Klaxon!
No words can convey the icy chill and heart stopping suspense that continuous tone meant to those who grew-up and lived through the Cold-War. For those who grew-up since; no words can explain that there was once a single harmonious all penetrating note of sound that signaled the end of everything!
1952 ... and so it begins!
... the dramatic beginning of the first issue of the comic book "Atomic War".
Unfortunately as I post more and more of the unfolding drama it will appear backwards to newcomers to the blog.
Aren't you glad that YOU are a faithful reader?
Aren't you glad that YOU are a faithful reader?
What a mistake to let a bald guy with a mustache run the 'big-board'. I mean, look at him; he's got Lenin written all over him!
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