Dr. Strangelove

Now, as for most of the US, Weitzel Elementary wasn’t on the Soviet list of primary targets for a hydrogen bomb blast. The film, made in 1951 by the Civil Defense Administration, was designed to allow civilians a chance to preserve their eyesight, avoid flying shards of glass, and minimize the radiation burns and absorption of radioactivity that would take place from a nuclear bombing some distance from their location. At Weitzel, they also talked about heading to the nearest Civil Defense shelter after the explosion, which as far as I ever found out, was in the Post Office downtown, about four miles distant. But, remember kids, we had to be ready for the bomb to go off at any time, day or night. OK, now, back to math class… Quite a world to live in. And ripe for comment by serious filmmakers to highlight the madness. And along came one of the geniuses of film, and among the most independent in thought, Stanley Kubrick. It made complete sense for Kubrick to do a film of the asylum-like world we were in due to the shadow of the atomic bomb. 

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