The View from a Drawbridge

I have always been haunted by a few seconds of footage. You’ve probably seen it, too. It’s often used in post-apocalyptic movies and documentaries to illustrate the impact of a nuclear detonation. Every time I see this footage, it always makes me slightly nauseous. Maybe because it seems so impossible, so unreal.

First you see a white house sitting alone in a desolate landscape, with weird shadowing behind it. You can almost imagine it being on Mars. And then it is blown off the face of the planet in a split second. Kaboom. Gone.

The first time I saw that little portion of this video, I was a small child. I was probably too young to be watching something like that, but it always pops up without warning. I’ve been treated to it more than 100 times, I’m sure, since then. Now I don’t even have to see the explosion to feel queasy. All I have to see is that creepy house.

I’ve always thought this was staged; that it was special effects, straight out of someone’s twisted imagination. Well, yes. And no.

After a little research, I discovered that this was part of Declassified US Nuclear Test Film #55. (You can see the house in question disappear around minute 9:45.) It kind of freaks me out to think that there are at least another 54 such films floating around out there.

It is staged in that it was a house built especially for this particular test. It was never occupied. But the explosion was all too real.

Now that I’ve sat through the entire Federal Civil Defense Administration video, I’m even more disturbed. We had so much power in our hands, and we used it. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

At minute 10:15 they show the troops that witnessed the blast as the nuclear wind rushes past their unprotected bodies. The narrator said, “The fury of it had stunned some, but not one was injured.” Oh yeah? Tell that to their widows after the cancer took them.

At minute 11:40 the narrator says, “When readings indicate safety for human beings, the troops are led in for a tour of the area.” Again, they were completely unprotected, and you realize that they are swimming in the radiation that will destroy their lives, and they don’t even know it. Poor schmucks.

That video is the stuff of nightmares. To this day, though, I can’t figure out how those cameras remained stationary amidst the devastation of that blast. That’s why I always had my doubts about its veracity. That’s what I found so creepy—that someone could imagine such a thing, script it, and put it on film. But in retrospect it’s even more creepy that we imagined it, created it, and made it come to pass.

Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. Some things can never be undone.