Here’s a second Las Vegas essay from NC’s intrepid observer of all things Nevadan (from the unique perspective of a 24-year-old Canadian Russian and Slavic Studies grad student). In her first essay, Brianna shot a Glock and an AK47. In this one, she visits the Atomic Testing Museum. In two short essays, she somehow manages to go straight to the heart of American strangeness, at least from an outsider’s point of view. Brianna Berbenuik publishes the blog Desire Machines and writes occasional film critiques here.
dg
Let’s See Them Top That
By Brianna Berbenuik
I’m pretty disappointed that I don’t get to see the nuclear test sites out in the Nevada desert. Being a Canadian citizen, I am required to go through extensive paperwork that takes up to 6 weeks to clear in order for me to be able to see radiated holes in the ground. This is a letdown, because I hear that parts of the desert have turned to glass in the wake of the testing. I imagine this and think that there is, somehow, a morbid, unshakable beauty in this. The aftermath of great destruction: quiet and delicate. However, just up Paradise Boulevard off the Strip, there is the Museum of Atomic Testing. My consolation prize.
We walk there, which is a fucking mistake because it takes forever and by the time we actually get there my legs and feet are sore and I kind of feel like strangling something. The museum is a boring cube of grey concrete passing as a building. It resembles a bunker in some aspects, and maybe that’s the point. I buy our tickets, sign a guest book, and walk through the museum, which is essentially full of dismantled bits of the nuclear test stations that once were out in the Nevada desert. Everything is educational, scientific and at times hilarious. So much of the American zeitgeist of the 1950’s and until the end of the Cold War was illustrated by videos and documents “preparing” people for a nuclear attack. Incidentally, I read somewhere that less than 1% of the American population, during the Cold War, had fallout shelters.
But, because it is America, within all this educational material and nostalgia there is a lot of propaganda: videos of veterans of nuclear testing extolling the virtues of having nuclear bombs and how it truly does protect the country and the greater good in the end. No regrets. But the war is over.
