Time Zero

On the final episode of Time Zero, we visit the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, a continent-wide monument to the advent of the nuclearized world.  You'll hear from several familiar voices, including photographer  Richard Misrach ; folk historian  Sarah Fox ; anthropologist Joseph Masco ; archaeologist Rosemary Joyce ; sculptor Rose B Simpson ; choreographer Yvonne Montoya ; activist Jo...

In the second half of A Doomsday Gap, we continue to dive into nuclear deterrence and mutual assured destruction, unpacking how atomic anxiety underscored the Space Race, suburban architecture, UFO sightings, billionaire behavior, and even.. lithography?  New York-based performance artist  Michael Smith  walks us through his snack bar that turns into a government approved fallout shelter.  Alex Bo...

Nuclear deterrence is the concept that the mere possession of nuclear weapons, particularly by rival states, prevents their use. The only way to avoid the end of the world, we are told, is to stockpile enough weapons to end the world, several times over. This schizophrenic worldview has turned the United States into a nuclear death cult.  In this first half of A Doomsday Gap, we'll cover the arc o...

How do we prevent future generations from excavating the most dangerous material we have ever produced? Across the planet, there are hundreds of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel that will be radioactive for—at the very least—tens of thousands of years. Some people have suggested launching it into outer space. Others have proposed sinking it into the ocean. The current solution, though, is t...

In 2015, an inaccessible art exhibition opened inside the radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone in Japan. Its organizers, a collective called Don't Follow the Wind, entered the zone dozens of times over multiple years, working with displaced local residents and a roster of international artists to secretly install site-specific artworks across an area that is categorically uninhabitable. The show w...

Seemingly overnight, a coordinated blitz for a "nuclear power renaissance" has emerged. Big tech billionaires, millennial energy start-ups, and the Trump administration all insist that deregulating nuclear power is the only way to secure America's economic, computing, and national security futures. Well-meaning liberals, desperate to decelerate climate change, are overlooking the documented danger...

For nearly a century, nuclear armageddons have been imagined across American film, television, comics, and multiple literary genres. From early sci-fi pulp magazines, to Cold War thrillers, to 90s-era Nickelodeon cartoons, to contemporary big budget gaming-turned-streaming franchises like Fallout, citizens of the United States have consumed their own obliteration, courtesy of atomic reckonings.  O...

What would happen if a wildfire consumed Los Alamos National Laboratory? Over the last 25 years, LANL has narrowly escaped two major wildfire events. On a warming planet, it may be only a matter of time until the lab's luck runs out, and its almost 30,000 acres of plutonium pit facilities, nuclear waste storage, contaminated canyons, and explosives caches are turned into an atomic incinerator. You...

When the Manhattan Project arrived on the Pajarito Plateau in northern New Mexico, the land was not uninhabited. To establish the highly secretive Site Y, the United States military forcibly removed generations of Nuevomexicano ranchers and blocked regional Indigenous groups from accessing sacred sites. Almost immediately, the lab began detonating massive amounts of explosives, scarring the landsc...

This week, we continue our investigation into uranium extraction on Indigenous landscapes across North America, and consider diverse community and artistic strategies for documenting and confronting the ongoing legacies of nuclear colonialism. It is time to name these monsters.  In Episode 04: Wastelanding (Part 02), you'll hear from interdisciplinary artists Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa,...

The US government knew that uranium mining posed existential threats to workers. But throughout the Cold War, as they bought ton after ton of uranium ripped out of the Four Corners region—frequently on the Navajo Nation—they provided miners, millers, and transporters little, if any, protective equipment or education about the well-documented dangers of radioactive materials.  In Episode 04: Wastel...

Between 1945 and 1992, the United States detonated over 1,000 nuclear bombs, primarily at the Nevada Test Site and in the Marshall Islands, with additional detonations in New Mexico, Alaska, Mississipi, Christmas Island, Colorado, and in the Pacific Ocean. That amounts to, essentially, setting off a nuclear bomb every two weeks for half a century. The colossal amounts of radioactive fallout produc...

In the early hours of July 16, 1945, the US military detonated Trinity, the world's first nuclear weapon, in the Tularosa Basin of southern New Mexico. Locals were not warned beforehand, evacuated after the blast, or given any follow-up information.  On this episode, you'll hear from members of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, artists Joanna Keane Lopez and Eric J. Garcia, and anthropolo...

On the premiere episode of Time Zero, we look at the ways that the threat of nuclear annihilation has shaped global realities for 80 years—and how contemporary artists, filmmakers, and writers have responded.  We also consider the nuclear industry's many ecological violences, from uranium extraction, to large-scale atomic energy disasters, to the ethical and engineering failures inherent to the di...

Time Zero is a ten-episode series about the nuclearized world from American writer, researcher, composer, and visual artist Sean J Patrick Carney. Episode 01 arrives June 25.  Visit timezeropod.com to get an essay version of every episode with citations, links, and images delivered directly to your inbox.