The mushroom cloud (here shown over Nagasaki) has become the ubiquitous symbol for nuclear weapons in popular culture.

Since their dramatic public debut in August 1945, nuclear weapons have been a reoccurring motif in popular culture, to the extent that the decades of the Cold War are often referred to as the "atomic age."

The stunning power and the astonishing visual effects have been the topic of art including Andy Warhol's silkscreen Atomic Bomb (1965) and James Rosenquist's F-111 (1964-65) to Gregory Green 's mockups of atomic devices and the efforts of artist James Acord to use uranium in his sculptures.

Nuclear weapons are a staple element in science fiction novels. The phrase "atomic bomb" predates their existence, back to H. G. Wells' The World Set Free (1914) when scientists had discovered that radioactive decay implied potentially limitless energy locked inside of atomic particles (Wells' atomic bombs, however, were only as powerful as conventional explosives, but would continue exploding for days on end). The chain reaction type nuclear bomb was predicted in a 1944 science fiction story by Cleve Cartmill titled "Deadline" which caused him to be investigated by the FBI, concerned that there had been a breach of security on the Manhattan Project. (reference?) Many of the characteristics of nuclear weapons themselves have played on ages-old human themes and tropes (penetrating rays, persistent contamination, virility, and, of course, apocalypse), giving their standing in popular culture and politics a particularly emotional valence (both positive and negative).

Many films, some of which were first novels, feature nuclear war or the threat of it. Godzilla (1954) is considered by some to be an analogy to the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan, and was the start of a more general genre of movies about creatures mutated or awakened by nuclear testing. Them! (1954) (giant ants in Los Angeles sewers) also starts because of this. The Incredible Shrinking Man (novel) ( film, 1957) starts with sailor irradiated by bomb test, that much based on real incident of irradiation of Japanese fisherman. Others include: A Canticle for Leibowitz, (novel, no film, 1959) the previous war is known as the "Flame Deluge"; On the Beach (novel) (1959) end of humanity; Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), accidental war, black comedy; Fail-Safe (novel) (1964) accidental war, drama; The War Game (1966), Planet of the Apes (novel) (5 films, 1968-1973), Taiyo o nusunda otoko / The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979), When the Wind Blows (1982), The Day After (1983), Testament (1983), another postwar vision; WarGames (1983), young computer nerds and their mischief; The Terminator (3 films, 1984, 1991, 2003) T2 has depiction of explosion; Red Dawn (novel) (1984), Mad Max (2 films, 1979-1985), Threads (1985), Miracle Mile (1988), By Dawn's Early Light (1990), True Lies (1994), Broken Arrow (1996) ("Broken Arrow" is military jargon for a lost nuke); The Peacemaker (1997), and The Sum of All Fears (novel) (2002). The number of movies with references to nuclear weapons is too large to attempt to list.

Nuclear weapons are also one of the main targets of peace organizations. The CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) was one of the main organisations campaigning against the 'Bomb'. Its symbol, a combination of the semaphore symbols for "N" (nuclear) and "D" (disarmament), entered modern popular culture as an icon of peace.

Further reading

• Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America: society and culture in the atomic age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), ISBN 0520083105.
• Jerome F. Shapiro, Atomic Bomb Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2002).[1]
• Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear fear: a history of images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).