h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sad and tragic, yet a story that needed telling. Thanks Dmitri



GB

Thanks, GB!

A well written piece about a fascinating period of history: that of the growth of technology researched and tested after the onset of the cold war.The sheer power involved in these weapons is still staggering. The Russians of course dropped the most powerful bomb during this period and this was then followed by stricter controls and moratoriums on the continuation of development and testing of these types of weapons
The fact that today Japan is having such terrible problems with its nuclear power generating industry after the earthquake and tsunami events is so terribly ironic considering that they are the only nation to have suffered from nuclear power used in anger!

Again, a good piece written about a fascinating period of history.

>>they are the only nation to have suffered from nuclear power used in anger...<<

Amen, LL. May it stay that way forever. May no one ever drop another bomb.

It dawned on me (after Bel pointed it out) that the irony of this entry was no doubt intended by our editors when they picked it out of the bin this week. We're all crossing our fingers and toes about events in Japan.

What startled me about seeing it on the FP today was that last night, Elektra and I were watching a blast from the past: the 1959 film 'Beyond the Time Barrier'. If you like to laugh at bad, old scifi, here's a synopsis:

http://classicscifi.blogspot.com/2009/09/beyond-time-barrier.html

This low-budget film has a cautionary message that was a bit surprising, I thought, for its time: in this dystopian vision, atmospheric nuclear testing resulted in a hole in the ozone layer that let in cosmic radiation, leading to the end of civilisation as the 1950s knew it (but leaving young women wearing high heels and ponytails).

I think we are lucky that people woke up to the thought that releasing radiation into the atmosphere is not a really good idea.

Now, if we can just do something about those power plants...

Here's a very disturbing yet mesmerizing animation depicting every nuclear explosion. It gets quite noisy in the 60's.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/05/animated-map-of-nucl.html

That's amazing, CZ. Thanks for sharing that! I've got it bookmarked now.