![]() ![]() Lookout Mountain Laboratory had been established by the Air Force in the late 1940s to secretly document American nuclear tests on film. Operation Ivy was a full-scale dramatic production mounted with a team of Hollywood professionals behind it. to show its awesome atomic power and hence, the theory went, deter other nations from challenging American power. But to others in government nuclear tests were as symbolic as they were scientific. Scientists considered military exercises like Operation Ivy crucial because they felt the government had to test bigger bombs if it wanted figure out how to build them reliably. Still, Mike was the first step toward what would become a worldwide stockpile of tens of thousands of thermonuclear warheads, giving rise to a nuclearized world and numerous nuclear near-apocalypses. Mike wasn’t really a bomb it could never be dropped from a plane or put on a missile because it was as big as a warehouse. The device, dubbed “Mike,” carried 800 times the explosive power of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. Operation Ivy documented a nuclear test of the same name, the first-ever detonation of a thermonuclear device. It marked the start of a discussion among America’s Cold Warriors that went on to shape a national debate about state secrecy. At the crux of the dispute was a question: how being a nuclear power squared with being a democracy. Federal agencies argued over whether to release the film Eisenhower had seen, and if so, in what form. ![]() government had not acknowledged that the test, the first use of H-bomb technology, had happened-and wasn’t yet sure if it wanted to at all. But there was one thing he knew for sure after watching it: all Americans needed to see Operation Ivy. Part documentary, part disaster pic, Operation Ivy featured Hollywood actor Reed Hadley and footage of the complete annihilation of a Pacific island as large as Washington, D.C.Įisenhower was stunned. Produced by government-backed Hollywood filmmakers, it recounted the recent test of an American thermonuclear bomb in the South Pacific. Eisenhower sat down in the cool confines of a White House screening room to watch a horrifying movie. On a hot June day in 1953, President Dwight D. ![]()
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