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Atomic Bomb Test - Operation Cue
29 kt · May 5, 1955 · Nevada Test Site · 2 Hiroshimas
On 5 May 1955, under the Teapot series, the Federal Civil Defense Administration built 'Survival Town' — a complete mock American suburb of furnished houses, stocked supermarkets, parked cars, electrical lines and clothed mannequin families — and detonated a 29-kiloton bomb beside it. Operation Cue filmed the destruction as civil-defense instruction.
Aftermath
The footage of mannequin families incinerated and houses blown to splinters was meant to teach survival, but it documented the opposite: at close range nothing survived. With over a quarter-million views, it remains one of the most-watched and most chilling artifacts of Cold War civil defense.