The Cold War, according to most historians, started in 1945 following the end of World War II. I was born in 1940, and I remember our calculating how close we lived to a major city (Pittsburgh, in my case) that could be a target for THE BOMB.Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the author’s blog, Saint Paul by Bike. Janet Poling Toth, Ohio: Probably the mushroom cloud. Or they come from preparedness efforts - such as backyard bomb shelters and yellow-and-black Fallout Shelter signs.Ī look, then, at Nuclear Moments through the decades, accompanied by selected responses from Facebook correspondents.

Or they come from fictional accounts - such as the 1957 novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute or the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Day After.

Sometimes our Nuclear Moments come from actual events - such as Hiroshima or Chernobyl. Nearly everyone who replied carries a nuclear image. We wanted to examine certain Nuclear Moments in recent world history that shocked our consciousness. We received more than 3,700 replies, including some who chastised us for fear mongering and emphasizing disaster. Knowing that we have lived with these potential consequences for more than 60 years, we posed this query to NPR followers on Facebook: We want to know the image that first forced you - as a child - to think about the possibility of nuclear annihilation. And no one knows the ultimate extent of the danger. Now there is Fukushima, a potential catastrophe. In a negative light, our dreams of peace and prosperity are periodically shocked by a nuclear nightmare and reminders that our abundance of nuclear power plants and weaponry could result in a worst-case scenario for humankind. 'I actually think we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix,' presidential candidate Barack Obama said in 2007. In a positive light, nuclear power is seen by some as cleaner, greener and less expensive than many other energy options. Each decade has produced images and imaginings that, when stitched together, add up to our ambivalent relationship with nuclear power. Since the 1940s, we have been living in the Atomic Age. Schoolchildren kneel to practice a 'duck and cover' air-raid drill in an elementary school classroom, circa 1955.įor young people today, the Fukushima disaster in Japan could be their Nuclear Moment.

Plans for 1950s fallout shelter