Die Website Biblio Odyssey postet normalerweise Illustrationen aus historischen, mittelalterlichen Büchern. Gestern Abend hatten sie diese Risszeichnungen von Atomreaktoren am Start, alle auf Flickr in HighRes.
Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts, hier das Posting auf Biblio Odyssey mit mehr Infos zu den Illus.
Vor ein paar Jahren bloggte ich über das Atomic Energy Lab, einem Spielset für Kinder aus dem Jahr 1949. Jetzt kann man so ein Teil bei Ebay ersteigern, noch steht der Preis bei 4150 Dollar, der dürfte aber noch um einiges steigen, denn das Teil ist eine echte Rarität.
In 27 years in the toy business we have never even heard of an example before. In any condition. After all everyone was building bomb shelters and scared to death of anything nuclear and yet gilbert decided that this would be a great item for kids. Parents were probably scared to death to even think of purchasing such a set for fear that their kids might turn green with radiation. Even reading thru the booklet is pretty frightning. Other than some wear on the bottom corners of the case, this set is a museum piece. Infact it should probably go to a history museum. The inside graphics are stellar.
1949 Stunning gilbert atomic energy lab mint in box!! (via Crunchgear)
Das hier ist eine Fruchtschale in Form eines Atompilzes. Meine Fruchtschalen aus verbogenen Schallplatten sind zwar auch nicht schlecht, aber so ein Keramikatompilz macht sich da nochmal ‘ne Spur besser. Und die Produktbeschreibung auf der (sehr nervigen Flash-)Website mag ich ja sehr.
Enola Fruit is a miniature household catastrophe, a mini-domestic apocalypse, inspired by the atomic mushroom cloud. It’s an apotropaic object with great cathartic value that plays with one of the most disturbing themes of our daily lives, which we have lived with since the Fifties. The atomic explosion is part of our collective imagination; it terrorises and fascinates us at the same time, like a symbol loaded with ambivalence – it is our personal boogyman, which we share with the rest of humanity.
Ooohdesign (Intro skippen, auf Progetti klicken, dort auf Enola Fruit) (via Notcot)
Auf Amazon gibt es Uran und das ist kein Katzenfutter. Aus den Kundenreviews:
It is not cat food.
Does anyone know if there’s a cure for sudden tentacles? The cat’s huge and well, doesn’t really look much like a cat anymore. She still answers to Muffin though. However, if she rubs against my bare leg one more time her new name will be calamari.
Saint meint: „Sehr umfangreiches Flickr-Set von Wanus, dass den Bunker Erich Honeckers zeigt, der zum Ende des Jahres dauerhaft verschlossen werden soll. Wer sich das Dingen noch mal von innen ansehen will, kann das noch bis Oktober nach Anmeldung hier tun. Jede Menge Infos zum Objekt gibt es dort auch.“
Das Objekt 17/5001 – Honecker-Bunker – wurde zwischen 1978 und 1983 als Ausweichführungsstelle des Nationalen Verteidigungsrates (NVR) External link der DDR in der Nähe des Dorfes Prenden gebaut. In ihm sollten die Mitglieder des NVR im Krisenfall Zuflucht finden und die Truppenverbände der NVA befehligen, welche nicht unter dem Kommando der durch die Sowjets befehligten “Gemeinsamen Streitkräfte” gestanden hätten. Der Vorsitzende des NVR war nach Walter Ulbricht ab 1971 Erich Honecker. Da er somit quasi die wichtigste Person im Bunker gewesen wäre, wird der Bunker auch Honecker-Bunker genannt. Er galt zur Bauzeit innerhalb der Grenzen des Warschauer Paktes als das technisch aufwendigste Schutzbauwerk außerhalb der Sowjetunion. In 5 Jahren Bauzeit wurde aus rund 85000 Tonnen Beton der dreistöckige Bunker mit einer Grundfläche von ca. 65 mal 50 Meter errichtet.
Deep in the radioactive bowels of the smashed Chernobyl reactor, a strange new lifeform is blooming.
Perhaps the creepiest sort of apparel, designed for our safety, but in actual truth making perfectly normal human beings look like totalitarian monsters from “Another Brick in the Wall” nightmare – gas masks are going to be around as long as WMD exist, and beyond.
This trip to the alienated Zone of the Chernobyl atomic power station was much more interesting than last year. We left early so that we would have more time.
As to the risk (as many ask) I will say the following: the background level in the Zone is not a big danger (except for several places where one would not think of going). The intenisty of the exposure dose of radiation at 10 km from site is not high. The dose received by us for a day is comparable to what would be received on one transatlantic flight. Greatest danger is risk of inhaling a hot particle, a slice of nuclear fuel from a reactor. The probability of this is low, as compliance with the safety precautions and rules of behaviour in the Zone aims for zero, but the possibility exists, therefore everyone solves it for themselves, and I have, for a long time, solved it for all.
These photos have been around a long time but I have to thank my son for pointing them out to me. They were taken by the legendary Harold Edgerton in the Nevada desert at a range of 7 miles at 1/1,000,000,000th of a second, at night. These 3 pictures show the first 3 milliseconds of an atomic bomb detonation.
A 35 acre subterranean Cold War City that lies 100 feet beneath Corsham. Built in the late 50s this massive city complex was designed by Government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike. A former Bath stone quarry the city, code named Burlington, was to be the site of the main Emergency Government War Headquarters – the hub of the Country’s alternative seat of power outside London.
Der neue Trailer zum Game „Fallout 3“ hat in der ersten Hälfte eine wunderbare 50s-Optik mit Atombomben beim Frühstück und Küchenrobots. Im Kühlschrank sitzt übrigens kein Indiana Jones. Und das Game dazu sieht auch ziemlich derbe aus. Prepare for the Future!
Nuclear power has long been touted as a utopian technology, ushering in an era of work-free, unlimited energy supply and correspondingly longer and healthier lives. Today it is more well-known for its dangers, which include the atom bomb and radiation poisoning . Yet for 40 years, Radium was a popular tonic added to everything from tea to lipstick. We’ve decided to explore some of the strangest radioactive products in history and the effects they might have had on those that used them.
Cold fusion, the act of producing a nuclear reaction at room temperature, has long been relegated to science fiction after researchers were unable to recreate the experiment that first “discovered” the phenomenon. But a Japanese scientist was supposedly able to start a cold fusion reaction earlier this week, which—if the results are real—could revolutionize the way we gather energy.
Die Stadt Prypjat (oder auch Prypiat) in der Ukraine, einem Teil der ehemaligen UdSSR: Eine Geisterstadt, wie sie im Buche steht. Sie war einst als ein Wirtschaftszentrum der Sowjetunion geplant, das durch das nur wenige Kilometer entfernte Atomkraftwerk Tschornobyl angetrieben werden sollte. Zu seinen Hochzeiten lebten in Prypjat knapp 50.000 Menschen – hauptsächlich Angestellte des Kraftwerkes und ihre Familien, aber auch Arbeiter, die die Stadt noch erweitern und kräftig ausbauen sollten. In Prypjat gab es alles: Schulen, eine Bücherei, ein Gesellschaftshaus und sogar einen kleinen Vergnügungspart – der jedoch nie eröffnet werden konnte.
A squadron of Russian gamers, clad in gas masks, army fatigues and melted mutant rubber masks, bribed Russian officials to take them deep into the mutagenic wasteland of Chernbobyl’s Zone of Alienation and cosplay a real-life version of the sci-fi PC game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
The famous 1957 photograph of Miss Atomic Bomb, a smiling Las Vegas showgirl in a mushroom cloud bathing suit with her arms outstretched to the sky, has often been used as representative of Cold War kitsch and a symbol of the bizarre love affair Las Vegas had with the Bomb in the 1950s.
But whatever happened to Miss Atomic Bomb? That is a question Robert Friedrichs of the National Nuclear Security Administration has been working on for the last couple of years. CONELRAD’s Missing Persons Bureau has volunteered to help Mr. Friedrichs spread the word of his quest.
A German teenager built this elaborate casemod inspired by the first-person-shooter game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl — it’s a detailed model of the melted reactor at Chernobyl, complete with fanciful glowing stuff. It opens up to reveal the PC workings and the interiors of the reactor.
It may seem like a fear rooted in Cold War paranoia, but with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sniffing around the Middle East, North Korea and other parts of the world for hidden enrichment facilities and smuggled radioactive materials, the threat of an atomic bomb hitting a major city is a harsh reality.
If your city is the target of a nuclear attack, you’ll need to do more than duck and cover. Between the sheer destructive force of the blast and the horrors of fallout, the odds of survival can be depressingly slim. Here’s a list of tips to beat the odds of this oft-feared doomsday scenario.
Die Fotografie von Motorrad-Touren durch das verlassene Tschernobyl ist ziemlich faszinierend und zeigt die Dokumentation „Life after People“ quasi im echten Leben, nur mit mehr Radioaktivität. Die Ghosttown-Tour von 2003 ging vor ein paar Jahren schonmal rum, jetzt gibt’s neue Fotos.
Link zur Ghosttown-Tour 2003
Link zur Gallery 2007
Link zur Tour im Frühling 2008
(via)
The international struggles of our world may lead to… (ka-boom) NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST!
Nothing lends itself better to a fear-based advertising campaign than your family’s radioactive death. So when the Mort Kridel Advertising Agency was asked to create a radio ad campaign for Survive-All Fallout Shelters, they did their PR-darnedest to scare the Wonder Bread crap out of nuclear families everywhere.
EARLY last year, President Eisenhower asked the Congress for funds with which to build a fission-powered merchant ship for the global spread of peaceful atomic knowledge.
“Visiting the ports of the world,” the President stated, “the ship will demonstrate to people everywhere the peacetime use of atomic energy, harnessed for the improvement of human living.”
In Washington, the basic idea of a floating exhibit of American fission techniques was received with general approval by members of the Congress. Some of the plan’s technical aspects, however, generated a bit of discussion. To avoid protracted experimental research and thus speed the ship launching date, it was originally decided to fit the vessel with a duplicate of the power plant used in the atomic submarine Nautilus. This notion was greeted with some misgivings. Atomic Energy Committee experts felt that we had already progressed well beyond the Nautilus installation and that a more advanced model was in order. The question before Congress, therefore, has been whether to blow 40 to 50 million dollars on an already obsolete “quickie” or to go slower and get a more advanced sample of our atomic progress sometime around 1959.
In the popular imagination, Albert Einstein is intimately associated with the atom bomb. A few months after the weapon was used against Japan in 1945, Time put him on its cover with an explosion mushrooming behind him that had E = mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose from the period: “[T]here will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis….Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb.
Die insgesamt 83.000 Quadratmeter der Bunkeranlage unterteilten sich in fünf autarke Sektionen mit 936 Schlafzellen, 897 Büros, 25.000 Türen, fünf Großkantinen, fünf Kommandozentralen und Sanitätskomplexen. Eine Kleinstadt unter der Erde, mit eigener Feuerwehr, täglicher Reinigung und Bergrettungsdienst, einer ökumenischen Kirche, einem Fernsehstudio für Ansprachen, Großküche und Zeitungskiosk.
Everything from cars to cargo ships can be nuclear powered, not just aircraft carriers or submarines,. If you want a really wild motor for your vehicle here are some real examples of nuclear engines.
From 1962, deep in the midst of The Cold War — everything you’ve ever wanted to know about fallout shelters but were afraid to ask.
