Nuclear folklore in the United States constitutes a range of stories and beliefs about nuclear power plants as well as accounts and beliefs associated with nuclear weapons. Nuclear lore includes vivid accounts of the building of the first atomic bombs, their initial use and continued testing, and the subsequent threat of their deployment in catastrophic global warfare. Allusions and jocular expressions about fears of mutation from radioactivity are also common in communities served by nuclear power plants. The most important source for folklore about nuclear power remains the accident that occurred in the Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor in central Pennsylvania in 1979. The accident spawned numerous stories that remain important resources for understanding how Pennsylvanians responded to the most serious nuclear accident in American history. Along with narratives about these experiences, nuclear folklore consists of a range of genres including beliefs, legends, jokes, and other expressions of folk humor. Despite the humor in the stories, the topic’s nature is so profound that nuclear folklore is intimately connected to major genres with deep spiritual connections including prophecy and sacred mythology.
Folklore associated with nuclear processes began with modern physics. Narrative creations and symbolic expression are central to thought experiments. Theoretical physicists invented symbolic figures such as Maxwell’s Demon and Schrödinger’s Cat, and they have clear analogs to mythological characters. In this respect, contemporary nuclear folklore has its birth in the imagination of the scientific elite. In the laboratory, nuclear lore was an element of the Manhattan Project in which thousands of top scientists created the first atomic bomb and ushered in the nuclear age. There are numerous chronicles of this history, but the collected stories of Richard Feynman constitute some of the most vivid accounts that are directly connected to folklore. This brilliant physicist recounted his stories to Ralph Leighton in the bestseller “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” (1985). Stories about his work in the labs at Los Alamos, New Mexico, provide a vibrant memoir of his experiences. It’s curious that so many of his memories are so light-hearted. They include narratives of his extracurricular activities during the project, including forays into the nearby mesas to play Native American drums as well as various pranks that he pulled, including breaking into secret locked files and other acts of safecracking. His personal experience narratives, however, also address the deeply serious implications of building the first nuclear weapons. Symbolically, the bomb emerges as a twentieth-century Pandora’s Box, and its builders are cast in Promethean, even fatalistic terms, for they have unleashed the instrument of our potential destruction. The foreboding nature of nuclear lore is tempered by dark humor in the folklore about nuclear weapons. Parodies of activist causes, for example, appeared on bumper stickers such as “Nuke the gay, Iranian whales” during the 1980s, and even President Ronald Reagan used macabre humor by making an ill-considered quip about bombing Russia at the end of the Cold War.
The gallows humor and nervous quips are also prevalent in folklore associated with nuclear energy. The Three Mile Island accident may have created the most folklore about nuclear power, and these texts are certainly the best documented. During the early morning of March 28, 1979, a mistake was made in setting a valve in the cooling system of the reactor. The result was a partial meltdown that damaged 70 percent of its core. Within two days, Governor Richard Thornburgh issued a voluntary evacuation order of pregnant women and children within a five-mile radius of the power plant. Within a week, more than one-half million residents left the area, most returning within a couple weeks. Decades later, residents of Middletown and the surrounding Susquehanna River communities continue to narrate accounts of the accident. Three Mile Island folklore initially consisted of quips and jokes. They frequently spun around ideas about glowing in the dark, developing malformations from genetic mutation, and living in nuclear families. Yvonne Milspaw documented this folklore, and she wrote of the jokes, stories, cartoons, and other nuclear lore that her students in the Middletown area shared while the crisis was unfolding. At that time, one of the pithier riddle-jokes asked, “What’s the five-day forecast for Harrisburg? Two days.” This was followed by “Forecast: cloudy with a 40 percent probability of survival” (Milspaw 1981, 61). Other folkloric expressions directly critiqued the nuclear power industry. Three Mile Island’s abbreviation, TMI, came to stand for “Too Many Idiots.” Sardonic T-shirts appeared with the saying, “I survived Three Mile Island—I think,” and nuclear folklore was poignantly evident in the infant’s attire with the saying, “Did I survive Three Mile Island? Ask me in twenty years.”
Physicist and mathematician Richard Feynman leans on a sculpture while speaking at Cal Tech University, Pasadena, California, 1959. The fear of the vast power of the atom harnessed by scientists in the mid-twentieth century gave rise to an entire strain of nuclear lore. Richard Feynman became one of the most recognized and affable faces of physics of the late twentieth century, and his often light-hearted approach to the serious matters at the core of such concerns struck a popular chord, as evidenced by his best-selling memoir, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985). (Joe Munroe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Decades after the accident, folklore associated with Three Mile Island remains part of central Pennsylvania’s culture. Legends based on the fact that the authorities did not disclose full information remain prevalent. The common belief that the reactor was within one hour of a total meltdown cannot be fully verified, but it is true that authorities took weeks to disclose the severity of the accident. Studies of the site assert that the radiation from the accident caused only slight risks to residents, but there are numerous stories that assert increased levels of disease and even mutations of flora and fauna in the region. Milspaw also demonstrates that twenty-first-century TMI folklore shows strong continuity from the past: the prevalent theme of uncertainty about the future is coupled with frustration about a lack of clear information from authorities. The chaos is exemplified by a view that splitting the atom has now made nature out of control and that it cannot be tamed by sophisticated scientific and advanced technology. Folklore about nuclear power reflects both anger and resignation about modern themes where human life is subjugated by an awesome power that simply cannot be controlled. As Milspaw notes, these themes are often expressed in stories that emphasize the need to remain calm while also recognizing real dangers, even if nuclear meltdowns and nuclear war bring us to the brink of annihilation.
There is a strain of nuclear lore that presupposes the inevitable obliteration of humankind. Daniel Wojcik examines how folklore about the atomic age is integral to various apocalyptic beliefs. There is a range of narratives about the end of the world in many cosmologies, and Wojcik looks at ways that nuclear folklore is integrated into these early beliefs about the end of time. He examines both Catholic and conservative Protestant belief constructs in the United States as well as various dystopian worldviews in North America and abroad. Throughout his research, he demonstrates how real and imagined events connected with splitting the atom are integral to apocalyptic thinking. The presence of conspiracy thinking is highly amplified in many of these belief systems. Those who accept these prophetic accounts may try to verify the existence of unseen forces by looking for clues in everyday elements of popular culture. A recent Internet meme, for example, cast the appearance of Cabbage Patch Kids as a simulation of genetic mutation created by the federal government to prepare children for what our species will eventually look like. Other conspiracy beliefs link the federal government to a universal New World Order rooted in secret societies such as the Bilderberg, Illuminati, or the Trilateral Commission. In some prophecies, these organizations are fronts for more nefarious powers. Diabolic forces will bring the power brokers together to hasten the collapse of all political orders, thereby precipitating the world’s demise through nuclear catastrophe.
It is important to recognize the range of stories and beliefs within nuclear folklore. There are lighthearted accounts of the seemingly quotidian activities of those employed in nuclear industries, but nuclear folklore includes stories that embody the terror of dystopian writing and the literature of atrocity. The theme of attempting to maintain psychological equilibrium and a modicum of hope, however, is nearly ubiquitous in all genres of nuclear folklore. It is evident in the accounts of how life returned to normality after Three Mile Island’s disaster, and it is present in stories of individual experiences during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983. The focus on undisclosed information is also common in these accounts. When nuclear brinksmanship has been and still remains a verifiable element of the nuclear age, these stories, beliefs, and other cultural expressions that constitute nuclear lore cannot be dismissed as mere folklore. Stories of near-misses in the face of nuclear brinksmanship are prevalent both in the history and the folklore of the nuclear age.
Gregory Hansen
See also Conspiracy Theories; Microwaved Pet; Philadelphia Experiment; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Feynman, Richard. 1984.“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character. As told to Ralph Leighton and edited by Edward Hutchings. New York: W. W. Norton.
Milspaw, Yvonne J. 1981. “Folklore and the Nuclear Age: The Harrisburg Disaster at Three Mile Island.” International Folklore Review: Folklore Studies from Overseas 1: 57–65.
Milspaw, Yvonne J. 2007. “TMI-2: Elements in the Discourse on Disaster.” Contemporary Legend 10: 74–94.
Walker, J. Samuel. 2004. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wojcik, Daniel. 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press.