Curated Contents of the Book

Crossroads

Table of Contents and Introduction by Jimmy J. Pack Jr., Thomas Van Osten IV, & Tom Hazuka

Warning…

The high-pitched whine of the air raid siren is inextricably connected to any mention of nuclear war. In 1952 the Chrysler Company created “the most powerful siren ever built,” which was about the size of car. It was the second iteration of their siren built in response to President Truman’s creation of the Federal Civil Defense Administration. Originally intended to warn of incoming Soviet planes carrying atomic bombs, by the 1980s, when the FCDA was long gone, they were repurposed to provide a 30-second countdown to doomsday—the approximate time it would take for a Soviet missile to hit the U.S. But as our stories show, many predictions of a war have no announcement—sometimes they start because of human blunder or human ignorance.

Blast!

On July 25th, Bikini Atoll experienced the fourth nuclear weapon ever detonated, Shot Baker, which turned the peaceful waters of the Bikini lagoon into the largest radioactive soup on the planet. Sealife was irradiated, and fallout particles covered what remained afloat of the 95 ships first anchored in the lagoon, some with their decks holding caged sheep, goats, pigs, and rats. In less than an hour patrol boats carrying men to recover instruments were sent to the ships. Salvage crews were working underneath the water two hours later. All told the U.S. Government exposed 15,000 sailors to the after effects of nuclear weapons, shortening their lifespans based on the amounts of exposure to radioactive material. The blasts of Operation Crossroads were all bigger than expected, and as the Cold War progressed, mushroom clouds became larger, and fallout more and more of a problem. The blast always sets off a different series of problems for mankind in our stories, not all with predictable results.

Fallout

Fallout; whether it is the literal or the metaphorical, atomic weapons have changed the course of human history. In our stories the results of the use of atomic weapons sometimes end in the fantastical, while others end mankind with Eliot’s final whimper.