ABSTRACT
Within the visual culture of the nuclear age, a very few sequences of film now stand as the core American cultural memory of the atomic bomb. This sequence of a forest experiencing nuclear blast, for example, has attained a kind of iconic status, reproduced repetitively in documentary and fiction films for the past half century to demonstrate the power of the exploding bomb (see Figure 7.1). In presenting a forest bent to the breaking point, the intellectual value of these three seconds of film is to introduce viewers to an experience of the nuclear sublime. 1 The power of the blast, when mapped against one’s own locality, also provides a rare point of physical reference in US nuclear footage, a recognizable human scale that has informed official statements, antinuclear activism, and Hollywood productions alike. The trees of Operation Upshot-Knothole (stills taken from the film Operation Upshot-Knothole). https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203077856/b0ca4cc4-1f08-441c-8a10-238e5540b437/content/fig7_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
