Nuclear Home Movies
Friday A/V Club: The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is posting declassified footage of atomic tests on YouTube.
(Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Nuclear test films would be eerie and hypnotic even if they didn't have the extra resonance they reap by representing the power to inflict mass death. And now there's more of them around: The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is digitizing declassified atomic footage, and this month it started posting the clips online. Go to the lab's YouTube page, and you can watch the government nuking the water…
…the sky…
…and the space beneath the ground:
To peruse the whole catalog, go here. Bruce Conner makes art from atomic-test footage here. Stanley Kubrick makes art from atomic-test footage here. The health consequences of being near such tests are explored here. Past editions of the Friday A/V Club are here.