MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Ryan Rideout This is a lovely little document. The awe and terror that these technological developments ought to still inspire has waned with the passing of the more imminent threat they once posed, but the story of how one shred of rational justification can snowball into a cancerous, institutionalized insanity remains valid. This documentary doesn't preach or condemn. If it had been mere political diatribe, the filmmakers would never have gained the participation of unapologetic proponents of arms research that they did. It's just a story.Going into the film blind, I wondered where the story could go after the mention of over 100,000 deaths from two bomb drops in Japan. It occurred to me while watching that, nasty and needless as that sheer destruction was, it would have to have been a cautionary lesson. But in fact, history went in entirely the opposite direction. Bigger bombs. More bombs. More efficient delivery of bombs to ensure maximum damage. There was a line that made me chuckle about the eventual "obsolescence" of Fat Man, the bomb that killed over 40,000 in Nagasaki. The absurdities of the maniacal pursuit of greater destructive capabilities can gain nothing from impassioned commentary. As narrator, William Shatner plays it perfectly straight. The facts and the images presented could only be rendered maudlin by an attempt to shade what they represent. There are no soaring strings in the background. If you aren't saddened, awed, and enraged by the footage of goats and mice being caged on the ships of a ghost armada to test the death potential of these boys' toys, no talk will help you to be touched. Boats sunk, buildings broken, animals burned, innocent islanders irradiated: all of these crimes are justified and propagandized with the aim of developing a destructive capacity that can only be viewed as brutal and undiscerning, apocalyptic even.This is a film which shows what a committed group of like-minded individuals can accomplish when given the motivation, funding, and direction. It's a shame that so many engaged and able people would commit themselves to furthering this sort of end.

sol1218 Excellent documentary narrated by actor William Shatner about the dawn of the Nuclear Age with the detonation of the first Atomic Bomb in the New Mexican Desert in he early morning hours of July 16, 1945. With the Atomic bomb in US hands it wasn't long before it was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing as much as 130,000 people and thus ending the Second World War.It was after the war that the US started to test the atomic bomb in a number of islands and atolls in the vast Pacific Ocean which proved just how dangerous and destructive it was by vaporing both islands and ships, surplus destroyers battleships and even aircraft carriers, that the bomb was targeted at. It wasn't until late August 1949 that the US lost it's monopoly on the Atomic Bomb with the Soviet Unions detonation of its own in Eastern Siberia. With a major enemy the USSR now having the bomb which secrets was stolen from the US, by the likes of pro communists Klaus Fuchs and US Army Sergent David Greenglass and the Rosnebergs Julius & Ethel, from right under its nose the US was now determined to start testing bigger and far more destructive atomic or nuclear bombs. That in order to keep the Russians for gaining the upper hand over it in the race with the USA on the dead end road for achieving mutual destruction" or a Thermo Nuclear war which no side could possibly win.The film documents the tests conducted by the US and USSR of nuclear weapons that by 1963 at the signing by the two nations of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty well over 330 atmospheric nuclear bombs were tested by the US Governemnt alone! If you add up all the other US nuclear tests,underwater and underground,they amount to some 1,000! That's not counting those conducted by the USSR and other nations with nuclear capacity, Britian and France, the number of nuclear tests reach almost 2,000 in just under 20 years after the first atomic bomb was exploded! It's a wonder that the world was still around by then since there was enough nuclear bombs exploded, one a monstrous 57 megaton blast by the Soviet Union, to have destroyed the Earth a couple of times over!With all the nations with nuclear weapons coming to their senses in how dangerous they are and trying to stop making and testing them Communist China suddenly and unexpectedly joined the nuclear club on October 16, 1964 with an Hiroshima type blast in the Gobi Desert making whatever gains in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons a mute point! With Communist China's leadership not willing to stop making and testing their new discovered toy or WMD: Weapon of Mass Destruction.One of if not the best documentary ever made about the both Atomic & Hydrogen Bomb with first time never before shown rare US and USSR as well as Communist China government footage that brings out just how destructive these devices are. Even in peace time nuclear tests have destroyed and polluted, with nuclear radiation, thousands of square miles of sea and land making it both uninhabitable and void of any signs of life. You can just imagine what a real nuclear war could do if a world leader of a country that has the bomb is crazy enough to start one.

veeyy Thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. The old, deteriorating footage of nuclear weapon tests that was painstakingly restored for this project is awesome, yet at the same time, terrifying.Most refreshing is that the film is not revisionist, but an honest historical account of those dark days in world history, presented in the context of those times.No matter what one's politics, this film is a must see. Personally, I believe that with the end of the Cold War, it would finally be achievable, if the collective willpower were there, to actually rid the world of nuclear weapons.

dementos This documentary contains lots of impressive footage of atomic explosions. Those "atomic mushrooms" are frightening, yet beautiful.I just wish the whole documentary were a bit more informative. For instance, instead of showing one explosion after another, I wish they had explained the difference between a regular atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb, for instance. And what's a "thermo-nuclear" bomb? Furthermore, I was missing a more critical view of the risks of atomic weapons. The social and political implications of nuclear weapons are barely touched upon. This would have been so much more interesting than just mentioning codenames for various tests and their corresponding explosive power, measured in "kilotons" and "megatons".Where were all the ridiculous American propaganda movies (like the classic "Duck and Cover")? What about other countries with nuclear weapons programs besides the USSR and China? All in all, the whole movie casts a picture of the atomic weapons race which is too neat and uncritical.All in all, the movie feels like a new piece of American propaganda: We are the good guys ("nuclear weapons are good and necessary, and we are great because we invented them"), and they are the bad guys ("they only use those weapons to put us and the free world in danger").