Exploding the 1950s Consumer Dream: Mannequins and Mushroom Clouds at Doom Town, Nevada Test Site

While the mushroom cloud rising above the Nevada desert is an iconic and familiar image, what went on beneath the cloud is hazier and less well understood. Surface level nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s entailed extensive scientific, military and social experiments. This article focuses on two projects overseen by the Federal Civil Defence Administration (FCDA), Doom Town I and II, and their ties with 1950s cultural values and the consumer landscape. It situates the two mock American townscapes as part of the cultural battlefield of the Cold War, and explores how they served as powerful but also deeply flawed symbols of American capitalism and a new suburban way of life.