The nuclear bomb’s place in pop culture

The nuclear threat has haunted pop culture since the Cold War. But it’s different now. vox.com/culture CULTURE   Did you read [Cormac McCarthy’s last set of novels]( written shortly before he died? Among other things, they were about living in the world built by the creation of the atomic bomb: the peace and prosperity of an ascendant America in the postwar world order, created by a moral atrocity. The creation of the bomb was also at [the center of Twin Peaks: The Return](, insofar as that show had a center. Now, of course, it’s getting spotlit in [Oppenheimer](. Yet every time the mushroom cloud casts its shadow in pop culture, I find myself a little taken aback. In the age of the climate apocalypse and mounting AI worries, nuclear war feels like a less urgent threat than it must have felt during the Cold War. Uncontextualized, movies about the atomic threat can feel a little retro. No one’s better at giving you context for a movie than Alissa Wilkinson. [In her latest essay, Alissa walks through the history of movies about nuclear threats](, from the ploddingly earnest morality plays of the Cold War era through the pitch-black satire of Dr. Strangelove and up to this summer of Oppenheimer. “The movie industry has always been both a shaper of fears and a reflection of them, a means for dealing with reality at arm’s length, through a big screen,” Alissa writes. She can tell you exactly why the movies are reflecting nuclear fears back out at us now. —[Constance Grady](, senior correspondent The nuclear bomb’s enduring, evolving place in pop culture [photo stills from the movies Fail Safe and Oppenheimer]( Columbia Pictures; Universal Pictures Before the bomb, the destruction of humanity was strictly the purview of the non-human. Whole civilizations told stories of floods or plagues sent by the gods designed to wipe everyone out. People could imagine mass weather events or catastrophes that might end the human race, but in those stories, our role in our own destruction was indirect, at most. No person could just push a button and end it all for everyone. That changed when the world realized how nuclear power could be harnessed. Now, we could level whole cities, or more, in the blink of an eye, and scientists knew there was a chance we could accidentally light the atmosphere on fire. For the first time in human history, the power to destroy the planet was in our hands. There was no stuffing the evils back into Pandora’s box. (Following the Trinity test, which proved the capacity of the bomb he’d spearheaded, J. Robert Oppenheimer famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He didn’t just mean himself.) [The discovery that any of us, theoretically, can annihilate the whole of humanity — perhaps by accident or on a whim — induces a whole new level of existential angst.]( There’s the fear of sudden death, of course. But then there’s a deeper dread, the sense that something in the balance of the universe has shifted. With a deity, you can petition and hope for forbearance. But look, we all know what humans are like. Even if a person can push that threat of total destruction out of mind for a while, it provokes an ambient anxiety, a permanent mental load. The movie industry has always been both a shaper of fears and a reflection of them, a means for dealing with reality at arm’s length, through a big screen. The bomb, and the world that brought it into being, has flooded back into pop culture in recent years, from Manhattan to Asteroid City to Oppenheimer. But that’s just the continuation of a long history: no wonder that in the Cold War years just after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, filmmakers were obsessed with the events that could turn “mutually assured destruction” into just “destruction.” [The movies understood the grave danger and the pitch-black farce of it all.]( [Read the full story »](  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( What loving Barbie says about us A Barbie aficionado and certified doll expert explains why life in plastic has suddenly become so fantastic. [Read the full story »]( Oppenheimer is the surprise fashion movie of the summer Is Oppenheimercore on the way? [Read the full story »](   Support our work We aim to explain what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters. Support our mission by making a gift today. 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