1 The Incredible Shrinking Man, dir. Jack Arnold, prod. Albert Zugsmith (Universal Pictures, 1957).

2 Spencer Weart deals extensively with fallout and radiation in Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). See also Paul Boyer, Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). There is also an extensive literature on the political impact of fallout. Carolyn Kopp argues that the origins of the fallout debate lie in the separations between the sensibilities of different fields, with the scientists most likely to oppose nuclear testing being biologists, whose priorities were very different from those of politicians like AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss. See Carolyn Kopp, “The Origins of the American Scientific Debate Over Fallout Hazards,” Social Studies of Science 9:4 (1979): 403-422. See also Allan M. Winkler, Life under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Howard Ball, Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950's (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

3 Ralph E. Lapp, Kill and Overkill: The Strategy of Annihilation (New York: Basic Books, 1962): 63; Samuel Glasstone, ed., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, revised edition, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, April 1962): 614-15.

4 Sontag, Dowling, and others interpret the artistic response to the atomic bomb in terms of personal psychology, much as the socialscience community has done. They locate the social violence expressed in the arms race within the personal human subconscious. Sontag believed that one reason for social violence on this scale is the human need to let out cruel and amoral feelings. See Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” in Against Interpretation (New York: Dell Publishing, 1961): 212-28; David Dowling, Fictions of Nuclear Disaster (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987): 3. Further expression of the Cold War as psychological dysfunction can be found in Terrence Holt, “The Bomb and the Baby Boom,” TriQuarterly 80 (Winter 1990-91): 206-17. Holt writes of the bomb, “it articulates an imaginary pattern of cause and effect in which the potential victims of nuclear weapons, the babies of the boom, are made to seem responsible for their plight. Ultimately, … this particular equation of babies with the bomb suggests that the nuclear standoff of the past forty years has answered needs in our culture that we are unwilling to admit, and may be incapable of giving up” (207). Weart also ascribes a fundamentally psychological nature to the imagery surrounding atomic weapons.

5 Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” 31.

6 Federal Civil Defense Administration, Facts about the H Bomb (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1955).

7 In fact it was the undeniable awareness of the thermonuclear component of the CastleBravo shot that prompted the AEC to finally admit publicly that the Mike shot had been thermonuclear, see Facts about the H Bomb.

8 Herbert York, The Advisors (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976): 73-87; Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War 1953-1961, 172-75.

9 See document, Request to Increase Maximum Exposure (EF3/7.3/32cmf), at http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/b4519007.gif.

10 Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace, 172-75.

11 The fallout cloud created by the Bravo shot extended over 200 miles to the northeast of ground zero, creating a lethally contaminated area of 7,000 square miles of the Pacific. The AEC calculated that many of the islanders (who had been located about 100 miles from the epicenter of the blast) were exposed to radiation at levels equal to those who had been 1.5 miles away from the epicenter of the Hiroshima blast. See Samuel Glasstone, ed., The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1962): 460-64.

12 Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures, (New York: Harper and Row, 1989): 112-13.

13 New York Times, March 12, 1954, 1.

14 The story of the crew of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (its full Japanese name, meaning Lucky Dragon No. 5) is told in Ralph Lapp, The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1958): 55-88; Oishi Matashichi, The Day the Sun Rose in the West. Bikini, the Lucky Dragon and I is the autobiographical account of a crew members (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011). American press coverage can be charted in the New York Times from March 17, 1954, through Eisenhower's press conference on March 31, 1954.

15 “The Active Straw,” Newsweek, November 12, 1945, 50.

16 David Bradley, No Place to Hide (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown Books, 1948): xiii.

17 “Problems of the Age,” Time, August 19, 1946, 90.

18 Bradley, No Place to Hide, 134-5. The incident occurred a month after the conclusion of the tests. Bradley did not amputate the sailor's arm, and there is no further mention of the soldier's health.

19 “Too Hot to Handle,” Time, November 10, 1947, 82.

20 “‘Death Sand’ Kills Subtly,” Science News Letter, August 5, 1950, 83; “Death Sand,” Time, August 7, 1950: 50.

21 “The Inside Story,” Newsweek, November 8, 1954, 17.

22 John C. Clark, as told to Robert Cahn, “We Were Trapped by Radioactive Fallout,” Saturday Evening Post, July 20, 1957, 19, 69-70.

23 Helen M. Davis, “Hazards of Smog,” Science News Letter, May 7, 1955, 299; “Atomic Light on the Desert…” Newsweek, March 21, 1955, 31.

24 Paul Jacobs, “Clouds from Nevada,” The Reporter, May 16, 1957, 10-16.

25 Them! dir. Gordon Douglas, prod. David Weisbart (Warner Brothers, 1954).

26 See Joyce A. Evans, Celluloid Mushroom Clouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Jerome Shapiro, Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film (New York: Routledge Press, 2002); Wheeler Winston Davis, Visions of the Apocalypse: Spectacles of Destruction in American Cinema (London: Wallflower Press, 2003).

27 Patrick Lucanio, Them or Us: Archetypal Interpretations of Fifties Alien Invasion Films (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987): 1. See also Mick Broderick, Nuclear Movies: A Filmography (Northcote, AU: Post-Modem Publishing, 1988): 6.

28 Gojira, dir. Honda Ishiro, prod. Tanaka Tomoyuki (Toho Films, 1954).

29 Godzilla! King of the Monsters! dir. Honda Ishiro and Terrell O. Morse, prod. Terry Turner and Joseph E. Levine (Toho Co., 1956).

30 In the movie, fishermen are shown washing up on shore with “strange burns,” much like events involving the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, which drifted into harbor with a crew suffering from radiation sickness. See, Yuki Tanaka, “Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?” in, Robert Jacobs, ed., Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010): 159-170; Chon Noriega, “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When ‘Them!’ Is U.S.” Cinema Journal 27:1 (Autumn 1987): 63-77.

31 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, dir. Eugene Lourie, prod. Jack Dietz (Mutual Pictures, 1953); It Came from Beneath the Sea, dir. Robert Gordon, prod. Charles H. Schneer (Universal Pictures, 1953).

32 Them!

33 Japan Gets Radioactive Fish,” New York Times, March 17, 1954, 1; “Case of Bikini Fishermen Causes Furor in Japan,” New York Times, March 28, 1954, E5.

34 Nuclear Fear, 191. In the classic form, scientists and soldiers competed to defeat these monsters; in this case, the scientists led the military. Peter Biskind sees this struggle as the triumph of liberalism over traditionalism, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983): 101-59. In some plots, like The Thing (from Another World), the scientists cannot be trusted, and force is the key to overcoming the threat. Biskind cites this plot as an example of more right-wing thinking. See The Thing (from Another World), dir. Christian Nyby, prod. Howard Hawks (RKO, 1951).

35 Biskind, Seeing is Believing, 6. See, Tarantula, dir. Jack Arnold, prod. Wiliam Alland (Universal, 1955); The Black Scorpion, dir. Edward Ludwig, prod. Frank Medford and Jack Dietz (Warner Bros., 1957); The Deadly Mantis, dir. Nathan Juran, prod. William Alland (Universal Pictures, 1957).

36 The Fiend without a Face, dir. Arthur Crabtree, John Croydon (Amalgamated Productions, 1958).

37 Though the relationship of many alien invasions in films to the Soviet threat of this early Cold War period is obvious, the legitimization of this alien threat by radioactivity speaks to more than just the Soviet enemy. It speaks to the enemy at home. See, Jodi Dean, Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998): 171.

38 Killers from Space, dir. and prod. W. Lee Wilder (RKO, 1954)

39 This Island Earth, dir. Joseph Newman, prod. William Alland (Universal Pictures, 1955).

40 The Amazing Colossal Man, dir. and prod. Bert Gordon (American International Pictures, 1957).

41 Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, dir. Nathan Hertz, prod. Bernard Woolner, (Allied Artists, 1957).

42 The Day the Earth Stood Still, dir. Robert Wise, prod. Julian Blaustein (20th Century Fox, 1951).

43 Biskind quotes scriptwriter Edmund North commenting on the Christian motifs: “It was my private little joke. I never discussed this angle with producer Julian Blaustein or director Robert Wise because I didn't want it expressed. I hoped it would be subliminal,” Seeing Is Believing, 152. For an interesting article on religious themes in atomic imagery in country music, see Charles Wolfe, “Nuclear Country: The Atomic Bomb in Country Music,” The Journal of Country Music 6:4 (January 1978):4-20.

44 Red Planet Mars, dir. Harry Horner, prod. Anthony Veiller (United Artists, 1952).

45 “Spy vs. Spy” first debuted in Mad, January 1961. Prohias was a Cuban refugee who was unwelcome in Cuba because of his antiCommunist cartoons. See Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (New York: Basic Books, 1995): 131; Antonio Prohias, Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook (New York: Watson-Guptill, 2001).

46 46. See, Robert Jacobs, “The Psychological Bomb: The Relationship of the American Social Scientists to Nuclear Weapons in the Early Cold War,” Peace & Change 35:3 (July 2010): 434-63.

47 The most obvious example of this is the television show Star Trek, with its internationally and racially unified crew.

48 Biskind sees this cosmic viewpoint as leftist, Seeing is Believing, 152-57. See also, Andrew Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989): 39-47.

49 The Incredible Shrinking Man.

50 Justice Downwind, 69-70; Killers from Space.