For most people, the scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull where he finds himself wandering through a nuclear bomb test is the worst (or second worst) part of the movie. For them, it’s a strain of the suspension of disbelief that he’d crawl into a lead-lined fridge and survive a bomb test. However, for me, it’s one of my favorite parts, not because of how he survives, but because it takes place in the fascinating survival town at the Nevada Test Site. Weburbanist has a great image gallery about these bombed-out Cold War relics.
I’m not sure why this stuff fascinates me so. I think because I was the last generation to grow up in the Cold War, and the last generation to have the mushroom cloud of death hovering over me in a very real sense. Sure, there’s still a lot of rogue nuclear weapons and nuclear waste out there, but it’s not the same as having an easily defined enemy state to keep a wary eye on. It’s more of a generalized paranoid anxiety now.
Tags: Survival Town, Nevada, nuclear testing range, bomb test site, atomic weapons, Cold War, atom bomb, historic sites
