bojacobs

bojacobs , 7 days ago to histodons group

Cold War Fairy Tales from the 1950s:

Just in case the monster under your bed turns out to be a thermonuclear weapon over your bed.

#ColdWar #NuclearWar @histodons

bojacobs OP , 7 days ago

Cold War Fairy Tales from the 1950s:

Students in schools all over the United States were issued dog tags so that their bodies could be easily identified after a nuclear attack.

@histodons

2/2

bojacobs OP , 6 days ago

@brooklyn11211 @timo21 @histodons Agreed with that. It was the same for my kids.

bojacobs , 23 days ago to sts group

American military leaders were aware of the dangers of radioactive particles long before #Hiroshima or #Trinity.

On #DDay there was a special unit under Operation Peppermint, that came ashore in Normandy with Geiger Counters in anticipation that the Nazis might "pepper" the beaches with uranium particles to sicken and slow the invasion.

#nuclear #radiation #RadiologicalWarfare @histodons @sts

https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/survey-instruments/mid-to-late-1940s/victoreen-models-247-a-and-247b-ion-chambers.html

bojacobs OP , 23 days ago

@Infoseepage @histodons @sts

That’s right. There were multiple stories in high circulation magazines about “radiological warfare” at that same time.

bojacobs OP , 22 days ago

@simon_lucy @histodons @sts

Yes, and this book was read by Leo Szilard, who was the physicist in the 1930s who in 1935 envisioned the mechanism that would actualize such a weapon, just years before fission was observed in a lab in Germany in 1938.

bojacobs , 3 months ago to histodons group

I was interviewed along with other scholars and activists about the film “#Oppenheimer" in today's edition of the Chugoku Shimbun, our local newspaper here in Hiroshima.

My general take as reported here is that the film essentially repeats the decades old American narrative of the #nuclear attacks on #Hiroshima & #Nagasaki. It tells a story about Americans and not Japanese people. It is a story about great scientists, great technology and great industrial capacity. It is a story about American exceptionalism, and not about the use of weapons of mass destruction against a civilian population.

@sts
@histodons

bojacobs OP , 3 months ago

@sts @histodons

Let me follow this up with an article I co-authored with Ran Zwigenberg:

"The American Narrative of Hiroshima is a Statue that Must be Toppled”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/06/the-american-narrative-of-hiroshima-is-a-statue-that-must-be-toppled/

bojacobs , 4 months ago to histodons group

Gun fetishism has a long history in the US. Here we see two self-deluded American Heroes displaying the rifles they have stored in their fallout shelters in the Cold War. Presumably this is to kill their neighbors.

Image #1: Dr. Hugo M. Kellner, 60, Caledonia, NY (October 1961)

Image #2: Dr. F. Archer poses with his rifle at ready in a sparsely furnished cinderblock shelter (March 7, 1961)

#guns #ColdWar #FalloutShelters @histodons @sts

Image of a man holding a rifle in his basement fallout shelter in 1961

bojacobs OP , 4 months ago

@histodons @sts

From the Time Magazine article “Gun Thy Neighbor” (August 18, 1961)

bojacobs OP , 4 months ago

@histodons @sts

I wrote about this almost 20 years ago, arguing that US narratives of nuclear warfare established “survival” as metric of success - which was a model individual Americans replicated in their own fantasies of surviving nuclear war.

“There Are No Civilians; We Are All at War”: Nuclear War Shelter and Survival Narratives during the Early Cold War

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229515727_There_Are_No_Civilians_We_Are_All_at_War_Nuclear_War_Shelter_and_Survival_Narratives_during_the_Early_Cold_War

GottaLaff , 4 months ago to random

“#Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.

“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.” #ClimateCrisis

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

bojacobs , 4 months ago

@GottaLaff @LillyHerself Same is true for "recycling" nuclear waste, except they've known for longer.

bojacobs , 5 months ago to histodons group

1/2

January 27th is the National Day of Remembrance for America’s Downwinders in the USA. These are people who lived downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test site, and were exposed to radioactive fallout. Much of that fallout remains radioactive and is now embedded into the ecosystem.

The US government has paid a token compensation to a minuscule portion of this community through #RECA.

#NTS #NNSS #nuclear #NuclearTesting #ColdWar @histodons

bojacobs OP , 5 months ago

@histodons

2/2

When is a nuclear "test" actually an "attack”?

https://vimeo.com/668545237?share=copy