The Nuclear Age

Most of you will have a hard time believing this, but back in the 50's, nuclear energy was the Next Big Thing. Despite having bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki not a decade earlier with this same kind of power, Americans saw the potential of all things nuclear. Hell, you could even buy a nuclear start kit from a comic book ad (you know, the ones that guarantee no money will have to be sent until you are fully satisfied with the product, but usually end up being scams). So when did all this perspective change? If the complete annhilation of two japanese cities did not scare them off, what did?

The first reason: Three Mile Island. A nuclear reactor off the coast of Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island was a disaster of a clusterfuck (yes, I like that word, move along now). To put things simply, a reactor suffered a meltdown, and some radiation leaked. The place was evacuated and quarantined. However, health investigations showed that only 8 millirem of radiation hit individuals in the 10 mile radius, which is the equivalent radiation of a chest x-ray. Nobody died, nobody even reported in sick, and the worst tragedy was a predicted two deaths of long term cancer, which never happened. However, the American public was pretty scared by the accident.

The second: Chernobyl. You've probably heard of this one, or at least played the level in Modern Warfare. A nuclear power plant in Ukraine under Soviet control, an explosion sent radiation scattering all over the USSR and western Europe, comparable in magnitude with the Fukushima Daiichi disaster seen earlier this year. This accident was actually more of a cause for concern, as the whole town of Prypiat had to be evacuated, and many people died of radiation poisoning, and pregnant mothers gave birth to malformed children, affected by the fallout in vitro. This served to destroy any good face nuclear power had saved, and made it the unpopular, dangerous energy it is wrongfully considered today.