Bulletins

Abstract

The word “atomic” is emerging as a red-hot marketing tool

High-energy marketing

Webwatch usually takes a back seat in the Bulletins section. But as we mentioned last year in “In Brief” (“We Are So Way Cool,” September/October 1999), the word “atomic” is definitely “in” these days. With all the ways that companies use “atomic” to promote just about anything, you just have to wonder, why does pop culture seem to love it so much?

The “Atomic Kitten” singing group's home page.

In the pages of the Bulletin, the word “atomic” has a specific meaning and history, but after researching it on the web, I started to think that marketing could very well be the ultimate peaceful use of the atom. Less dangerous. No proliferation risk. No nuclear waste.

Here are a few companies that have gone atomic:

WEB Watch

Atomic magazine, www.atomicmag.com, tops the list with its slightly twisted take on everything retro— including its monthly full-page Atomic Girl pinup.

When Leslie Rosenburg was looking to name the magazine, she wanted something that captured the idea of retro culture. “Atomic is so powerful and the word carries a lot of weight,” she said, “and it just looks so nifty on the masthead.

“Atomic is the essential guide to retro culture from Prohibition to the Kennedy years. The word not only has the historical connotation, but it has excitement that every issue is action-packed.”

What's in Atomic? There's Dottie, Atomic's “Queen of Suburbia,” with answers to all your domestic dilemmas. How to make dusting a breeze? Just don that big old “duster” house-dress, “with about nine or 10 good stiff crinolines underneath, and just sort of prance about,” she says. (Dottie recommends keeping the breakables up high.)

This spring's first anniversary issue features interviews with swing legend Keely Smith (Louis Prima's former singing partner), former Squirrel Nut Zipper Andrew Bird, and big band leader Bill Elliott.

Add photo essays on classic men's fashions and hot rod car culture, an article on pin-up icon Bettie Page, a few insider how-tos for hosting a retro bowling party, a screwball comedy or two, and you have just the thing to satisfy nostalgia for the good old days of fallout shelters and “Is there a Bolshevik in your bathroom?” posters.

Before hanging up, Rosenburg said I should check out Baltimore's Atomic Books. Scott Huffines, owner of Atomic Books, said the name really fits what he sells. “We stock all that oddball, obscure, fringe, off-the-wall kind of stuff,” he told me. “You know, pin-ups, retro antiques, a real kitschy conglomeration of things.

“We also sell all those atomic scare films,” he said.

Huffines wasn't sure why he chose the name—it just seemed to emerge from his unconscious mind. “I was fascinated with all those duck-and-cover movies,” he recalled. “All that stuff really interested me.”

He's noticed a recent resurgence in all things atomic. “Cycles repeat themselves,” he said, “and with the year 2000, things have really turned back to that futuristic stuff of the 1950s, like space-age clothes.”

Atomic Books also hosts Atomic TV, available in Real Video format, with its salute to “Underdog Lady,” a crusader dedicated to keeping the memory of “Underdog” cartoons alive forever.

On the way to a personal favorite—Atom Films, the only place on the web to watch “Angry Kid,” but more on that later—I accidentally came across a Chattanooga, Tennessee, video and film production house with the name Atomic Films. Thinking it'd be worth a call, I phoned owner David Lang, who said the company used to be called Syndicom, but employees grew tired of having to spell the name over the phone to phonetically challenged customers. They wanted something easier to remember, something with more impact, something that wouldn't get misspelled on their mail. “But what's really cool is the logo the name let us create. Atomic is energetic, upbeat, fiery.

“We made Atomic Fireballs our official candy and keep boxes of them in our lobby,” Lang said. “Even though the marketing aspect of the word ‘atomic’ wasn't our initial thought, it's definitely helped.”

Lang sounded so excited about his special relationship with Atomic Fireballs that I didn't have the heart to tell him that the candy, made just outside Chicago by the Ferrara Pan candy company, has been the Bulletin's “official candy” for years. I called Ferrara Pan for comment, but they referred me to their website, www.atomicfireball.com.

Taking the Atomic Fireball virtual tour, I learned that each Fireball is built from a single grain of sugar rotating in a revolving pan (think tilted washing machine and you've got the idea of their “hot panned candy process”). Over a two-week period, ingredients are added until each Fireball grows to the right size.

Bret Lortie is the managing editor of the Bulletin and Linda Rothstein is the editor. Other contributors to this month's “Bulletins” section are Sarah Horowitz, a Chicago freelancer; and Janne Nolan, a national security specialist at the Brookings Institution. Nolan's latest book, An Elusive Consensus (1999), was reviewed in the March/April Bulletin.

Atomic Fireballs were created by Nello Ferrara in 1954, so they're not only retro, they're authentic. Atomic Fireballs are also more popular than ever, with more than 15 million cinnamon-flavored jawbreakers consumed each week. (Don't bite down, though. One Bulletin editor, who will remain nameless, cracked a tooth that way.)

In the “dotcom” world where prime domain names, like prime real estate, are often held hostage for thousands of dollars, I looked to see who had won the turf war by snatching up atomic.com before anyone else. It turns out a Houston company, Atomic Games, took the honor.

Part of the “atomic” craze: Atomic magazine, Atomic Films, Atomic Books, and a still from Atom Film's “Angry Kid.”

Atomic Games registered atomic.com about 10 years ago, before the dotcom land rush. “I was fortunate to get it,” said Keith Za-balaoui, the company's owner. “Since then I've had only one offer to purchase it, and that was from a British concern who offered $40,000. I declined.” When Zabalaoui and his partner were looking for a company name, they remembered back to the 1950s and how “everything was ‘atomic’ this or that. I liked that,” he said. “I also thought up a few tag lines for the company, such as, ‘Every Atomic game is chock-full of nuclear goodness!’ and ‘Good to the last quark.’ My other partner didn't get it all, but since two of us thought it was so great, he didn't object.

“I didn't start Atomic with the goal of it becoming a war game company. But that's what it is. We've released 12 war games, all dealing with World War II.”

There is, of course, much more on the Internet that's atomic. There's Atomic Tangerine, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, and too many musical groups to count, including Atomic Opera, Atomic Kitten, and even the Atomic Fireballs.

I have to stop somewhere, and what better place than Atom Films, “the Internet's largest destination” for short films, according to the company. It's where you'll find “Angry Kid,” a series of short films created by Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame. It has nothing to do with atomic culture— they're just promoting amusing animated shorts with the word “atomic.”

Like all the other spokesmen from the businesses we looked at, Carrie Morris of Atom Films said “atomic” is the perfect marketing tool: explosive and powerful.

“It was the perfect name,” she said, adding that it also started with the letter “A,” which, in marketing terms, puts her company at the top of the telephone listings.

—Bret Lortie

Atomic tours growing in popularity

For nine years, the only way to see the Trinity site has been as part of a day trip run by the National Atomic Museum. For $40, the Albuquerque-based museum, owned by the Energy Department and operated by Sandia National Laboratories, will take you to the White Sands Missile Range on the first weekend of each April and October. The Trinity tours have been so successful (this past April, six buses schlepped about 300 people out there) that the museum has now decided to expand its offerings.

Viewing Yucca Mountain's tunnelboring machine.

Called the Scientific Tour Series, the trips include destinations ranging from the National Radio Astronomy observatory's Very Large Array to the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain.

In the next issue

• • Talking to the Taliban

• • Bombing the moon was only the beginning

• • Who wants new nukes?

“Our main customers are retirees or their families from the government or the labs, local senior groups, and museum members,” says Tony Sparks, the museum's commercial operations manager. This July, $150 will get you to the Energy Department's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant where, the museum's brochure promises, you can “take an elevator 2,000 feet underground to see the massive salt beds that will permanently contain low-level radioactive waste. Even take some of the salt home with you!” As if a plastic bag of pre-storage salt isn't enough, the tour also includes lodging in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and a stop at the UFO Museum in Roswell.

Other summer 2000 tours include Cheyenne Mountain and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for $225, and the Pantex plant in Amarillo for $130.

But make your reservations early: Some trips, like the one to the Nevada Test Site in September, require a security background check. According to Sparks, no one has ever flunked the screening. “Not yet, anyway,” he says. “But no one from Iran or Russia has tried to go.”

—Sarah Horowitz

In brief

▪ No more excuses

In a May 4 briefing in Huntsville, Alabama, Ballistic Missile Defense Office spokesman Mike Biddle introduced the idea that a national missile defense system need not actually work in order to be deployed. Speaking about the system's next test, scheduled for “no sooner than June 26,” Biddle explained that the “kill vehicle” may be classified as a success even if it fails to hit its target (Reuters, May 4). Biddle said the program's goal—for the missile defense interceptor to destroy the target in two out of three tests—is “self-imposed,” and not a requirement.

▪ Artichoke power

Biomass has never been so big. Farmers in northern Spain are growing 10-foot-tall artichokes to burn as fuel in power plants that will provide electricity to 60,000 people (Reuters, April 27). The roots of these inedible monster vegetables grow more than 6 yards long. (For more on biomass fuels, see Steve Fetter's article on future energy sources, page 28.)

But not this big

▪Missile Command, for real

After the Japanese government expressed concern in mid-April that the processor in Sony's PlayStation 2 could be adapted by hostile nations to guide actual missiles to their targets, the new electronic game console was put on Japan's export control list. But the controls, which required that an individual get government permission to take two or more PlayStations out of the country, were rolled back a week later. And the new toy (a million units sold in its first weekend) is scheduled to be shipped to retailers in many other countries, including, of course, the United States.

▪Quote without comment

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy writes that the Energy Department “is preparing to exercise its rare, and possibly unconstitutional, power to classify information that is privately held and that was generated without government support. Silex, Inc., has independently developed a novel form of isotope separation technology that is considered by [the Energy Department] to have proliferation significance. A ‘non-adversarial’ process is under way, a DOE official said, to impose classification on the new technology. The authority to classify information that is in the public domain has not been invoked since the 1970s.”

▪Informal recycling

A British scrap collector recently discovered that he had been driving around for months with a block of depleted uranium in his truck. He explained that the metal was “incredibly heavy for such a small lump…. I just chucked it in the back of my van and forgot about it” (Guardian, April 25). It was eventually detected by a Geiger counter at a scrapyard where he was making a delivery. Meanwhile, a uranium fuel rod was found in another scrapyard, this one in Staffordshire—a facility that apparently had not monitored materials for radioactivity. The fuel rod is believed to have been at the yard for more than a year. Government authorities say they intend to make the fuel rod's owner dispose of it properly—once they find out who owns it.

▪Too many secrets to keep?

U.S. officials have been under the gun lately for being careless with sensitive material. So it must be a comfort to U.S. bureaucrats to know that others can be lax with their secrets, too. On April 5, Britain's Ministry of Defence launched an inquiry after “secret strategy documents” were found on the pavement outside the Aldermaston nuclear weapons factory in Berkshire. According to the Guardian, a ministry spokeswoman said that most of the information in the documents—plans to reduce the size of warheads on submarine-based nuclear missiles and data on joint projects with the French and the Americans—may have already been in the public domain.

▪More equal than others?

The U.S. government considers countries that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-weapon states to be eligible to share U.S. nuclear power technology. In contrast, nations that have failed to sign the treaty are kept on a U.S. list of “sensitive” countries that, unlike those NPT signatories, are considered unqualified to receive U.S. technology. But this interpretation of the treaty now seems as iffy as the weapons-powers' pledges to disarm: In February, the United States signed technology-sharing agreements with famous NPT non-signer Israel. And why did the United States change its policy? As “a signal that Israel is a friendly country,” U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said (Associated Press, February 22). Israel “is not treated in a similar fashion as others on our list of sensitive countries,” Richardson explained.

▪My sensor smells a rat

“Fear of bioterrorism stands to cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion next year,” wrote reporter Ian Hoffman in the Albuquerque Journal (February 29), in a story noting that 50 sensing devices will be used to monitor the air at various sports arenas and throughout the Olympic Village in Salt Lake City in 2002. The sensors will be installed in an effort to detect a terrorist attack on the Olympic games involving biological or chemical agents. They also have many potential uses in the pharmaceutical and food-processing industries.

Creature discomforts

Just when you're enjoying a lemonade in the breezy comfort of your own back porch, look out: Genetically altered humans are on the loose. Well, actually, they're only in a movie, X-Men, released July 14 by 20th Century Fox. The film is based on the best-selling Marvel Comics series about a group of mutants who use their superpowers for the good of mankind.

Our fears made flesh: Them! was one of the first movies to seize on Americans' uneasiness with atomic testing.

Wait a minute—well-meaning mutants? Sure. These X-Men are twenty-first-century heroes, outcasts who, though shunned by society, still take the high road and protect the world from the evil Magneto and his cronies.

There was a time when the only good mutant was a bad mutant. So, in honor of X-Men, here's a survey of favorite mutant-monster movies of that era.

Bruce Davison, who plays right-wing Senator Kelly in X-Men, is partial to The Fly (1958). “The little creature caught in the web, with a spider's body and a human face, yelling ‘Help’, reminded me of my early years as an actor in Hollywood,” he says.

“The movies from the fifties really can't be beat,” says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy in Government Project. “They were sincere in a naïve kind of way, whereas their latest successors are ironic and knowing. The horror was pure, rather than grotesque.”

After flirting briefly with the idea of choosing Rodan! The Flying Monster (1957) as his favorite, Aftergood ultimately went for The Crawling Eye (1958), in which alien creatures living inside a radioactive cloud on a mountain snack on humans. “When I was five years old, it gave me nightmares,” he remembers.

The Natural Resources Defense Council's Robert S. (Stan) Norris is a Godzilla fan; he picked the 1956 version, which was recut from the Japanese original, Gojira (1954), in which a 400-foot-tall reptile with radioactive breath is revived by nuclear testing and goes on to destroy Tokyo.

“Godzilla really did express the deep-seated fears the Japanese had about the atomic bomb,” Norris explains. “It came at a time when there was a growing global awareness of atmospheric testing, and it was— in a very real sense—a cautionary tale of the atom gone wild.”

Although John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists can't pin down a favorite, he does remember that “there were certainly films of that type that scared the living bejesus out of me when I was a little kid.”

No one knows mutant flicks better than Paul Boyer, whose 1985 book By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age cast a scholarly eye on 1950s pop entertainment.

His favorite? “Fiend Without a Face is a strong contender, but being a traditionalist, I'll go with Them! (1954), the grand-daddy of the genre,” he says. “Those giant ants spawned from the New Mexico A-bomb test site are truly horrific as they rampage through Southwestern trailer parks and campgrounds searching for sugar. When the movie ran over budget, the final scenes were shot in the Los Angeles storm sewers. Look sharp and you'll see Leonard Nimoy (with normal-sized ears) in a bit part.”

Since these films reflect the world's uneasiness with the atom, it's no surprise that not everyone was inspired by them:

“I've never seen a mutant monster film,” Helen Caldicott, internationally known anti-nuclear activist, told me. “It was enough for my imagination to contemplate the long- and short-term effects of nuclear war, let alone seeing someone's depiction of same.”

On the other hand, Janne Nolan of Brookings, gave us a really inspired answer, as you'll see if you read the following story …

—S. H.

When three heads are better than … three heads

One person's favorite mutant monster flick is another's cooperative security analogy

Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) features four of the big-time monster mutants in one epic: Rodan, the giant bird; Godzilla, our favorite reptile; Mothra, the menacing moth; and Ghidrah, the three-headed winged monster who comes from somewhere in outer space.

Rodan, Godzilla, and Mothra are mortal rivals who live on the planet Earth. They all rely on the prompt and overwhelming use of force in their daily lives, usually to terrify humans, but sometimes also in bilateral mutant-to-mutant confrontations.

Violence is their first and, some believe, only means of engagement.

A realist or neo-realist explanation of their behavior is that this is to be expected from mutant-monsters, for several reasons:

First, it's a reflection of their profound physical differences (although Rodan and Mothra both have wings, a bird and an insect have very different “trajectories” and rules of engagement).

Second, the planet's lack of clearly demarcated sovereign borders, along with long-standing, unresolved inter-species rivalry, make conflict virtually inevitable.

And third, this behavior clearly derives from what might be called mutant “strategic culture.” Mutant culture, according to this logic, is too primitive for conflict prevention or resolution, and mutants lack the skills for even rudimentary tension reduction, such as confidence-building measures or Track II diplomacy.

In Ghidrah, the introduction of a new mutant into the trilateral rivalry changes these dynamics significantly.

Why? First, Ghidrah comes from another planet, escalating the conflict to an interplanetary incursion with little claim to legitimacy. Second, he poses a threat not just to one but to all of the earth mutants: His violence is therefore indiscriminate and lacking in clear objectives.

Godzilla as role model.

Third, he is clearly more weird than the others. He has three heads, for example (suggestive of MIRVs?).

He is also space-based, giving him clear advantages over the others. For instance, despite Mothra's enormous wingspan, which can cast a shadow over entire villages of hysterical Japanese ladies with parasols, he still cannot project extraterrestrial power.

How does this film challenge the conventional mutant paradigm, or CMP?

Ghidrah engages in repeated attacks against earth assets, populations, and mutants, wreaking wanton destruction.

Facing constant defeat, Godzilla finds a way to convene a summit with Rodan and Mothra. Speaking haltingly but without notes, Godzilla pleads the case for a mutant “alliance of convenience” to destroy Ghidrah.

The others are at first skeptical. “But we must save the planet, we all live here,” Godzilla begs, his voice plaintive and desperate. Finally, he prevails. The mutants agree to cooperate.

They engage in a joint operation using overwhelming and decisive force and drive Ghidrah shrieking into space in a humiliating retreat.

Ghidrah is a clear demonstration that even mutants, despite tiny brains and a Darwinian environment, can understand the imperatives of cooperative security when survival is at stake. Maybe policy-makers will be next.

—Janne Nolan

Ignore that missile— it's headed for Toronto

Canada has been debating whether it wants to participate in the proposed U.S. national missile defense (NMD) system.

With U.S. officials pressing for cooperation, some members of Canada's defense establishment are already lined up. As the Bulletin reported in its May/June issue, Daniel Bon, defense policy adviser, told Parliament in January that Canada should sign on to NMD because poorly made Third World missiles, aimed perhaps at Colorado Springs, might hit Toronto instead.

In March, however, the Canadian government asserted that it would not be giving its permission for the United States to integrate the new missile defense system into the joint U.S. Canadian NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) early warning system.

U.S. officials reacted by telling Canada it was making a big mistake. At a national security forum assembled in Fredericton in early April, Amb. James Swihart, a U.S. political adviser to NORAD, predicted that Canada would be left defenseless.

Nmd will be a computer-based system, Swihart said, and if Canada doesn't sign on, “the people who design that software will … [only] protect the 50 states.”

On May 2, Vice Adm. Herbert Browne, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, had more to say on the subject. Even if the system had the capacity to defend Canada, it need not do so, he asserted. If U.S. satellites detected a rogue missile heading for Ottawa, “we would have absolutely no obligation” to protect that city—unless Canada was an nmd partner.

A successor to satellites? The Helios solarpowered, unmanned aircraft, whose entire 256-foot wingspan is covered with solar and regenerative cells, can stay aloft for up to six months at a time. Its designer, California-based AeroVironment, Inc., claims that Helios will cost only about $10 million to deploy, far less than the $100 million required to launch a satellite.

If the United States used up all its missile interceptors protecting Ottawa and was left with none to defend Detroit, he said, the American people would say “that makes absolutely no sense” (Huntsville Times, May 3).

Those remarks brought an immediate rebuke from the Canadian defense minister, Art Eggleston, who had previously said he thought Canada would probably cooperate. But “we're not going to be blackmailed,” said Eggleston. “We'll make a decision on what's in the best interest of Canada.” After all, he added, “I can't think of any reasons why anybody would want to attack Canada and not attack the United States” (United Press International, May 2).

The next day, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denied that Browne's remarks reflected official policy.

Still, once started, U.S. government officials seemed intent on continuing to offend Americans, if not Canadians:

If the complete NORAD system is not fully available, said Lt. Gen. John Costello, the commanding general of U.S. Space and Missile Defense Command, the United States will have to base its lead NMD facilities in Alaska or North Dakota. Costello, who said he had been scouting out locations in both states, explained that they were cold and boring, but would be good places to site defenses against rogue missile attack.

—Linda Rothstein