100 Suns

[jules]

for those of you getting ripe with nuclear anticipation, you might want to check out this book. it is absolutely fascinating.

 

http://www.michaellight.net/work100suns.html

 

Between July 1945 and November 1962 the United States is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible - but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests until 1992. 100 SUNS documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen, and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.

 

The title, 100 SUNS, refers to the response by J. Robert Oppenheimer to the world's first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text, "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." This was Oppenheimer's attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 SUNS likewise confronts the indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were either conducted in Nevada or the Pacific the book is divided between the desert and the ocean. Each photograph is presented with the name of the test, its explosive yield in kilotons or megatons, the date and the location. The enormity of the events recorded is contained by understated neutrality of bare data. Interspersed within the sequence of explosions are images of awestruck witnesses.

 

The evidence of these photographs is terrifying in its implication and also profoundly disconcerting as a spectacle. The visual grandeur of such imagery is balanced by the chilling facts provided at the end of the book in the detailed captions, a chronology of the development of nuclear weaponry, and an extensive bibliography.

[apriorion]

I just rewatched "Trinity and Beyond" on Netflix the other day. I'd recommend that, too, if you want to lose some sleep: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114728/?ref_=sr_1

 

 

Also, check out Hashimoto's beautiful representation of every nuclear test detonation between 1945 to 1998:

[Joyrex]

I watched the announcement video on my home hi-fi last night... the bass in that melody that plays near the end is ominous as FUCK.

[jules]

i would not be surprised if that is on the album. at least in some form.

[ghOsty]

Atomic Cafe, is also a great documentary, that includes a lot of the old misguided public service propaganda about nukes from the 40s and 50s during the nuclear scares and early cold war... I'm sure we'll see a few of these films synced up to BoC songs once it's released.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083590/?ref_=sr_1

 

 

[sunshine recorder]

i would not be surprised if that is on the album. at least in some form.

cut the static out=cold earth?

[jules]

I wouldn't begin to speculate on titles. but we've heard that video and six number transmissions and everything is dark. I'm not expecting peacock tail to open the record if you know what I mean.

 

I thought it would be cool if those number transmissions were actual interludes on the album.

[Salvatorin]

I saw an interesting post on twoism:

http://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10526

 

movie from 1977 called "deadly harvest"

[jules]

wow, no doubt

[joshuatxuk]

1957...

 

 

 

I could rant endlessly about how excited about the themes and vibe of this album. I've always been obsessed with cold war era technology, history, imagery, etc. Places like Area 51, Nellis, the atomic test range, Edwards AFB, White Sands/Holloman AFB (where the Dayvan Cowboy video of Kittinger actually took place), etc. These remained key locations for classified activities through the 80s and 90s as anyone who watches x-files would know. Even now they are off-limits and secretive.

 

In the 50s especially there was such a morbid curiosity with atomic energy that overshadowed the horrors of nuclear warfare. The Bikini was flippantly named after the atomic tests on that South Pacific Atoll, just a year or so after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The enthusiasm for it's potential as a power source was closely related to the space age aesthetics of time as well. It's fitting that as people rallied against nuclear power and weapons in the 70s was the same era that space age 50s cars and neon signs were becoming relics of a hopeful future that never came to be. Ships were nuclear-powered, nuclear power plants were built with enthusiasm, hell they even tried building nuclear powered planes:

 

 

Personally I think the Yermo gas station was a clue to this. Someone at twoism pointed out that the super secret A-12 (SR-71 forerunner) plane was transported to Groom Lake/Area 51 via Yermo in the late 50s. It was halfway between Las Vegas and the nearby massive Nellis test range (where Area 51 and the atomic test sites are located) and the Edwards AFB, where the X-1 and other test planes broke records in the late 40s through the late 60s. Edwards AFB was actually going to be an important space port before X-20 program was cancelled. So I wonder if the album is going to be about the end of the false hope of atomic energy and military related space development coming to the end as the realities and horrors of the cold war became more apparent to the public in the 1970s. Yermo died out population wise in 1968, the same time atomic tests slowed down as well. The energy crisis of the 1970s as well as the slow-down of the space age with NASA ceasing moon missions came in the mid-70s as well. That era also fits their previous references which we all know well. Just a brainstorming idea.

 

 

 

 

[Caretstik]

To jules OP: I'd agree that that is an awesome book. Been meaning to actually own it for years, but I'd always have a good long browse when I saw it in Waterstone's. On a not-entirely different tack, this is a very accessible and well written and drawn book:

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=trinity+graphic+novel&safe=off&client=safari&hl=en-gb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7bqKUYGxMoG0O4-PgJgB&ved=0CD4QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=644#biv=i%7C0%3Bd%7CeUAp0zYT71WI1M%3A

[kaini]

cold war era movies about nuclear war are a fascination of mine

 

i'd also recommend

the day after

threads

the war game

[zupiclone]

this is getting serious

[jules]

that looks sick carestick!

[Guest crowder]

looks great, thanks for the rec.

[Guest Araungzeb]

cold war era movies about nuclear war are a fascination of mine

 

i'd also recommend

the day after

threads

the war game

I do too, I actually wrote an entire thesis paper on Cold War civil defense. These three movies are all great, I also highly recommend "When The Wind Blows." Amazing music, and there's something even more chilling about the animation.

[Caretstik]

I'm fascinated and disturbed in equal measure by the post-war nuclear programme as well. The testing in the Marshall Islands and the Enewetak Atoll played on my mind for a while after I'd read about it a few years ago. The island of Elugelab literally erased from the face of the Earth, think I read somewhere that a second island was also destroyed there, if anyone knows about that? Also this big fuckoff concrete dome on Runit Island full off contaminated waste (sorry, pretty sure all of this has a high Jazz quotient):

 

 

Nuclear weapons and their effects are both awe-inspiring and depressing.