Monday, October 4, 2010

How I Learned to Stop Worrying...







I got a call from a friend last night, and the conversation devolved into his fears and anxieties about the frightening decline of civilization. He began to yaw and bend toward how dangerous our times are as compared to the past. Maybe he's right. But as chance would have it, I had found over the weekend a piece of ephemera that I thought at least merited mentioning to him, as a reminder. It's a map of evacuation routes from our city, along with a lot of other instructions, in the event of a nuclear attack. It's dated 1956, and gives a pretty specific idea of where the bombs would fall, with circles indicating the immediate areas of most dire effect. Suffice to say that I live well within the zone that even a namby-pamby 50s-era nuclear bomb would blow clean. All that's just a pretext to show some other thematic images I've gathered over time that also caused bemusement or amusement. For example, a dexterity game where you try to roll the clear capsules into Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a map of Japan. How about a children's toy ring featuring a facsimile of a nuke? Or a dartboard with degrees of success measured by what you destroy, made in Japan, no less. And a panel from a comic book, showing the monster ape problem being neatly solved. In closing, I note that the southern evacuation routes for refugees from nuclear attack are the same roads used by the fleeing citizenry upon the incineration of the city by one William T. Sherman, a few years back when life wasn't as scary as it is today...

4 comments:

  1. Ah . . . Sherman's March with an Atomic bend.

    and in other news, i offer one of my favorite quotes, which i printed in nuclear orange and framed to keep upon my desk, "In a world where they can split a tiny atom and blow up hundreds of thousands of people, no telling where it will lead. Best to find a quiet place and do what you have to do." This wisdom came from Jackson Pollock's grocer on Long Island in a scene from the film Pollock (2000)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi!
    I'm an Atlanta native and I just stumbled across your blog today via Accidental Mysteries. Your blog is awesome! A great way to get rid of cabin fever during this snow.
    Where did you get that nuclear map of Atlanta?
    Keep up the great work!
    Tim
    P.S. please see my new blog http://museumoffoundobjects.tumblr.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, Tim. A friend found that map at a yard sale in Virginia-Highland. I'll look forward to seeing your finds as you post them on your blog. Thanks for visiting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Cool stuff you have got and you keep update all of us. useful source

    ReplyDelete