Category:
Atomic Power and Other Nuclear Matters
September 1950: The AMVETS organization announced its plan to issue plastic dog tags to all civilians in the United States, to help identify people in case of an atomic emergency. The tags would carry the wearer's name, address, and blood-type. The tags were plastic in order to "prevent radiation effects in the event of an atomic explosion."
AMVETS hoped to have the tags issued to all Americans within 18 months, but obviously that never happened.
Some searching has revealed that President Truman and actress Doris Day were presented with their own atomic dog tags, but I'm not sure that anyone else ever got one.
Philadelphia Inquirer - Sep 29, 1950
New Philadelphia Daily Times - Sep 28, 1950
November 1961: As an experiment in survival, Portland radio announcer Bill Davis spent a week confined in a windowless fallout shelter with his family... and his mother-in-law.
They survived, although Davis's wife admitted, "There were problems."
One of the problems was that four days into the test an earthquake struck Portland, and the Davis family, cut off from communication, thought it was a nuclear attack.
Medford Mail Tribune - Nov 1, 1961
Medford Mail Tribune - Nov 10, 1961
Medford Mail Tribune - Nov 9, 1961
I would not trust goofball slacker Dagwood Bumstead to split any atoms for me. But in 1948 the authorities obviously thought he was an identifiable role model for their science popularization.
I would like to see this updated for this week's news: DAGWOOD DISCOVERS GRAVITY WAVES.
See several more pages of
this comic here.
Italian toy maker Brumm normally makes miniature models of fancy sports cars (Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, etc.). But in 2006, the company decided to release
models of the "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They sold, at the time, for around $10 — but
now go for around $36, if you can find any in stock.
When the company debuted them at the
International Toy Fair in Nuremberg, the bomb models
generated a lot of controversy. The media described them as "Atomic bombs for the children's bedroom," and critics said they were in poor taste.
The company defended itself, insisting that its intent was to "provide a small historical contribution so as not to forget what generated the worst catastrophe of the twentieth century” and that the bomb models were actually a protest "against the insanity of nuclear war."
Of course, these weren't the first atomic-weapon toys ever produced. See this earlier post:
Make nuclear war in your own home.
Designed by Lee Pauwels of Los Angeles to protect his six-year-old son from harmful atomic rays given off by a nuclear explosion. He noted that the suit wouldn't protect his son from the concussion of the blast, "But authorities believe a person could survive the blast at much closer range if he were lying down and wearing the suit. Afterward he'd be able to leave the area that had become contaminated by harmful rays."
I wonder if this suit still survives somewhere, stored in someone's attic. Well, it must be around if even atomic rays couldn't harm it. This is the kind of thing that should be on display in the Smithsonian (if I were running it).
The Eugene Guard - Jan 1, 1952
Traverse City Record-Eagle - Dec 26, 1951
via USC Digital Library
via USC Digital Library
Tuck your kids into bed with the "Atom Blanket" and you know they'll be safe from surprise nuclear attacks!
Atom Blanket: An American blanket manufacturer is widely publicizing this lead-lined model ($49.50), said to shield wearers from atomic radiation, fire, and shock 10 miles from blast center. Civil-defense experts have not changed their view that basement shelters are more effective.
Source:
Newsweek - Apr 26, 1954
Note: Although Newsweek claimed this blanket was widely publicized, I haven't been able to find any references to it in papers and magazines from the 1950s -- beyond the reference in Newsweek itself. Perhaps it was advertised in trade publications that have never been scanned and placed online.
In 1959, Walter C. Gregory of North Carolina State College introduced "atomic" peanuts to the world. Despite the name, they weren't radioactive peanuts.
He had exposed peanut seeds to huge amounts of radiation to create mutant strains. Then he had selected the mutant strains with the qualities (size) he liked. And in this way created jumbo-sized peanuts.
As this
article at Atlas Obscura notes, what Gregory was doing was "mutation breeding," and it's the way many of the varieties of fruit and veggies we eat nowadays are created. We no longer call it "atomic" food, though it is.
Since the 1950s and 60s, mutation breeding has created around 3,000 commercially available varieties of plant—durum wheat, rice, soybeans, barley, chickpeas, white beans, peaches, bananas, papayas, tomatoes, sunflowers, and more. Almost any grapefruit you've bought was probably a mutant.
"Atomic" peanuts
Man and woman eating "atomic" peanuts
Kansas City Times - Jan 12, 1959
An ad placed in
Time magazine (April 26, 1948) by the "Federation for Railway Progress" boasted about their investment in atomic research, and urged railroads to join the federation to benefit from all the great advances that atomic research would soon bring to the transportation industry:
Will your railroad have a place at the atomic research table?
No industry stands to benefit more from atomic "vitamins" in its diet than the undernourished railroads...
A new, lighter and stronger metal—which could be applied to the construction of light-weight freight and passenger cars—may well come out of atomic research.
There is also the promise of new and more efficient lighting and heating systems, and other possibilities which only properly directed research could uncover.
Almost 70 years later, is it possible to say if U.S. railroads actually did benefit in any way from atomic research? I've never thought of railroads and atomic research as being in any way related.
Roger Fisher on how to prevent nuclear war. From
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar 1981.
There is a young man, probably a Navy officer, who accompanies the President. This young man has a black attache case which contains the codes that are needed to fire nuclear weapons. I could see the President at a staff meeting considering nuclear war as an abstract question. He might conclude: "On SIOP Plan One, the decision is affirmative. Communicate the Alpha line XYZ." Such jargon holds what is involved at a distance.
My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, "George, I'm sorry but tens of millions must die." He has to look at someone and realize what death is — what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It's reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."