For all its praise, the film furthers the dominant narrative of the bombs as a morally fraught but necessary project, with American anxieties playing a starring role.
Priests from several religions pray for the victims of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki upon the 60th anniversary.
Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images
What if there was another nuclear incident in the US? A disaster management scholar looks back at the history of nuclear events to assess the risk.
The gadget in the Trinity Test Site tower. Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.
The crucial phase of our discovery of black holes took place in a suitably dark period of human history – World War II.
It’s been more than 70 years since an atomic weapon was used in warfare, but the global nuclear weapons stockpile still stands at more than 14,000 warheads.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it unleashed one of the most devastating events in history, which still has implications today.
The Nazi atomic effort relied on work done in this remote lab.
grob831
Feb. 28 marks the 75th anniversary of Operation Gunnerside. A stealthy group of skiing commandos took out a crucial Nazi facility and stopped Hitler from getting the atomic bomb.
For the first time, human beings harnessed the power of atomic fission.
Keith Ruffles
By figuring out fission, physicists were able to split uranium atoms and release massive amounts of energy. This Manhattan Project work paved the way both for atomic bombs and nuclear power reactors.
Fifty years after the Maralinga atomic tests, an exhibition grapples with the pain and devastation left behind.
Karen Standke, Road to Maralinga II (detail). Supplied
The Maralinga atomic tests were devastating to life and land in Central Australia. Black Mist Burnt Country brings together dozens of artistic responses in a powerful, but somewhat incoherent memorial.
Blasted trees in the aftermath of a bomb test at Maralinga.
On September 27, 1956, an atomic mushroom cloud rose above the Maralinga plain - the first of seven British bomb tests. Why was Australia so keen to put UK military interests ahead of its own people?
The Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, which dropped the first atomic bomb in history. The bomb was made from Congolese ore.
Reuters
Susan Williams, School of Advanced Study, University of London
The Soviet Union tested its own atomic bomb in 1949, to the profound shock of the US. This heated up the Cold War dramatically and thrust the Congo to the centre of American geopolitical strategy
‘A-Day’ marked the first of 23 atomic bomb explosions at Bikini.
Department of Energy
In the summer of 1946, the U.S. government detonated the first of many atomic bomb tests in the Marshall Islands. Seventy years of radiation exposure later, residents are still fighting for justice.
US military censors contained information after the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving Americans with a limited understanding of the impact of radiation.
The average age of survivors is now 80. In five years, very few of these first-hand witnesses will be around to remember the event. Many of their stories are in danger of being lost forever.
Neo Tokyo – the setting of the popular anime film ‘Akira’ – is about to explode.
News of the Hiroshima bombing spread quickly to the US public but, thanks to science fiction writers, atomic bombs were discussed more before the war began than during it.