From the 1950s up through the early 1990s, the specter of nuclear war cast a shadow over the world like a giant, gloomy mushroom tattoo. Hollywood and our own morbid imaginations came up with any number of scenarios that would wipe out humanity in a series of blinding flashes: robots, Russian and American policies of mutually assured destruction. But Kubrick was probably closest when he imagined the nuclear era as a game of poker between cocky, absent-minded lunatics. Only he probably didn't go far enough. After all, he could have never imagined ...

During the Cold War, American and Soviet military leaders temporarily forgot why nuclear bombing yourself was a bad idea. The "nuclear weapons tests" conducted on home soil were officially for research purposes. In...