This film is undated but I'll wager this was made post-1949, after the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb.

The "magician" represents- at first- Nazi Germany. The magician couldn't develop the bomb but the Allies did, releasing "the good atom" and everything was cool until the magician was back at it again. This time the magician (now representing the Soviet Union) succeeded in creating "the bad atom". "Tommy" represents the Western powers.

The really bizarre part is that the film shows "the bad atom" being unleashed (an inevitabiity according to the film; "the time control was set. The evil atom had to be dropped!"), laying waste to the world- nuclear war, but hey, no big deal, because we'll just wake up "the good atom" and with the help of "good men everywhere" (the United Nations), the world will be rebuilt and everything will be cool, just like it had never happened.

Hayzoos Kristo! How bizarre! Imagine being eight years old and having this little cartoon injected into your head in class. I imagine this effort to soothe children's fears made for some sleepless nights for more than one kid.

Give it a look. Less than 8 minutes long.

Ok, now I’m hiding under my desk...

quote:

Originally posted by SigFan:
Ok, now I’m hiding under my desk...

We did those drills (hiding under the desk) when I started grade school in 1959.

Kids had a lot to worry about back then.
Bad Atoms, and Booby Traps.

I started 1st grade in 1964, I remember shit like this in school. And plenty of "duck and cover" movies too.

I found out that my wife used to wear her shoes to bed as a child, because she wanted to he ready to run when the bombs started falling. Poor little kid. I think she watched too many episodes of 12 O’Clock High.

I had to learn the "duck and cover" drill in Elementary School.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened to Austin, Texas if the commies dropped a nuke in 1960? Now you can know...

https://texasarchive.org/2013_02699

One of Joe Biden's earliest training films?

Oh I remember this well and not so fondly. In 1953 I was in first grade. Duck 'n cover. Backyard bomb shelters. And all the rest during my formative years culminating with the Cuban Missile Crisis....

In 1960 Austin, a guy could drive home from work quickly enough to get in his boonker with his wife and child.

quote:

Originally posted by mr kablammo:
Have you ever wondered what would have happened to Austin, Texas if the commies dropped a nuke in 1960? Now you can know...

https://texasarchive.org/2013_02699

With that narrator it sounds like an episode from the Twilight Zone. The use of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries was a bit much.

We had to hide when the air raid sirens were going off.

Bob

I started school in 1955 and I can state categorically that I never did a "duck and cover" and I don't remember any Nuclear Armageddon scare stuff. Only thing I recall was the adults being a little apprehensive during what I later learned was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I don't know if I was particularly clueless (probable...) or if it's failing memory (also possible), or that sort of thing just didn't happen in rural Michigan.

yeah that's a crazy one

born in the 60s. definitely remember understanding the concept of nuclear Armageddon growing up.

we watched 'The Day After' during school in HS.

reading about Able Archer is sobering.

--------------------------

I grew up in Tampa in the 70s, MacDill Air Force base is there. We did plenty of duck and cover drills.....

I remember the duck and cover drills in first grade and a number of this sort of government produced movies. Dr. Strangelove seems to capture those times well.
The narrator had the same tone in their voice, very expressive up or down depending on the mood they tried to project.
Back then people mostly seemed to believe anything the government said was true. I guess that was from the WW2 era of patriotism that hadn't yet worn off.

You can see where people looked for some hope in the face of that chilling new reality.

International Geophysical Year

I don’t recall actually participating in duck and cover drills, but I certainly remember the discussions about measures to survive a nuclear attack. One close relative who lived in Boulder (of all places!) had a shelter of sorts for a time.

And although it became fashionable over the years following the era when the fears about nuclear attacks were at their highest to ridicule the civil defense preparations and teachings such as D&C, most people today don’t realize that they weren’t all just government propaganda designed to give the masses a false sense of some security.

Will your shelter or hiding under a desk help if a nuclear weapon detonates a block away? Of course not.
Will they help if a nuclear weapon goes off two miles away? Perhaps, and a lot more people would have been two miles from an explosion than who were a block away.
People have survived the collapse of buildings in earthquakes because they were under furniture and there are other nuclear weapon effects it’s best not to be directly exposed to if we have the option. Ducking and covering to this day makes much more sense than standing by a picture window to watch the funny lights and smoke; anyone remember the Beirut explosion?

In view of how people commonly deal with natural disasters now, the civil defense efforts of the 1950s and ’60s seem naïve to me today, but they were at least trying to do something, even if it was just to reduce the fully-justified fears of the time.

None of that, BTW, is really about the film in the above post. It is truly bizarre, and it’s not anything I recall ever seeing at the time. I can only guess what its intent was other than, perhaps, a bit of pacifist propaganda produced before it was decided that all atomic energy is bad, no matter what the form or purpose. (I also suspect it was one of the earliest depictions of all the races and cultures of the world marching together to a better future, and was perhaps some sort of UN production.)

There were many people, including many scientists who helped develop and build the first atomic bombs, who decided after the fact that there was no justification for them and that their use against Japan was immoral, etc., etc., etc. Anyone viewing the film should have in fact concluded that it was the US scientists and military leaders who constituted the first mad “wicked magician.” That would also have made sense if it were something commissioned by elements of the UN or the Soviet bloc.

Good call, para, exactly 1950

Tommy and the Atom