Irradiating the End Times: U.S. Nuclear War Films and the Rejection of Apocalypse

Author: Adam Brukman

Field of Study: History

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 43

Timeslot: Afternoon

Abstract: In the 1950s and '60s, American cinema spawned pertinent visions of nuclear war. As portrayals of nuclear end-times, nuclear cinema demonstrated a key eschatological tension: would nuclear war simply bring a horrifically destructive end to the world, or would its fires and fallout yield transformation and truth (as in the Christian apocalyptic tradition)? The latter is the case in movies such as Five (1951), Day the World Ended (1955), and Panic in the Year Zero (1962). These films divide turbulent pasts and hopeful futures for humankind with the nuclear bomb as the apocalyptic wedge between now and then. In movies like Dr. Strangelove (1964), there is no societal transformation after the dropping of the bombs. Rather, the narrative terminates after the total nuclear destruction, the audience is denied comforting visions of post-apocalypse. The conflicting nuclear films of this time serve as a microcosm for a fundamental tension between the inherently optimistic myths of apocalypse and the all-too-real potential for the end of human history.