Customer Reviews

History of Nuclear Weapons - The Ultimate Weapons (2-DVD Set)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was expecting some modern footage but the cover is misleading, there arent even any jet fighters. The film only covers from post WWII to the fifties, there wasnt any 80's, 90's, 00's or even any 70's footage. Its all black and white or colorized and goes on about the experimental studies and effects of nuclear explosions. This is something you can watch for free on you tube or at the library. I gave it an extra star because it does show vintage footage of interest to people and coverage.

First, the positives. This DVD goes into great detail about the preparation of a given test, explains what is going to happen and then does an equally detailed analysis through the use of original footage. It's fascinating the types of tests that were permitted in bygone days.

Now, the drawbacks and negative aspects. The DVD itself hasn't been updated since 1982, 28 years ago, so it wouldn't play on a modern computer, check the specifications on the packaging, a Pentium II of all things. This also made it very difficult to navigate through the menus. How about updating the "structure" of the materials so it is easier to find items??

Finally, this purports to be a "history" of atomic weapons, but contains a handful of tests, and none that I could find leading up to the dropping of Little Boy and Fat Man on Japan.

Buy "Trinity and Beyond", though repetitious, it is much, much better at giving a feel for the tests the US conducted from World War II through the 1950's.

Honestly, given what is going on in the world today I can't think of a more important time to order this DVD.

Quite simply, what this disk does is show you the impact of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II up into the 50s.

Unlike many similar DVDs, it doesn't get bogged down in a lot of politics or commentary. Instead it just gives you the real footage of the bombs exploding and lets you make your own decisions.

This is a clear, easy to load disk.

My father bought me this DVD because he knows that I like vintage documentaries and it was a great gift.

Nukes are scary - let's face it - but the explosions when played out on a big screen television are incredible. The quality of the footage is very high - considering they were shot by the army while the bombs were going off.

I liked seeing the scenes of entire islands getting destroyed and the can't imagine what it would have been like to be one of the soldiers watching these bombs go off live.

Now that the Cold War has ended, many people forget just how chilling and essential the atomic bomb was for two generations of Americans.

From the 1950s until the late 1980s everyone was thinking about the Bomb and the entire world sat at the edge of nuclear war.

Yet, it was hard for people to understand the potential of nuclear bombs at first. They were so much more devestating than any weapon known before - and even the government wasn't really sure about how destructive they could be.

So, in order to document what was happening in the arms race, they filmed many of the atomic tests so that they could be studied and eventually shown to the American people - both as a way of understanding the new weapons and also letting the American people understand the true dangers of letting the Russians have access to nuclear technology.

The films here document that time and place fairly well. They don't use any naration or voice overs - so you are left to come to your own conclusions, which is not a bad thing.

The shots are well filmed for government camera work and you can a real sense of both the destructive power and strange beauty of the early nuclear weapons.

I really enjoyed most of the footage on this DVD set. For me teh Bikini Atoll shots are by far teh most intersing of the bunch, but I also liked the overall effects shots from the 1950s. The restoration work on the footage is some of teh best I've seen - they really got rid of a lot of the grainyness that you usually see in government films from this era. A good product.