Mary W. Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about the excesses of science in which a being is created and then turns on his creator. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, America passed through what might be called a Frankenstein-moment as nuclear power burst on the scene first as a wonder that had been harnessed by American scientists in time to end World War II and to make America a leading world power and then was perceived more and more as a threat because our enemies also had this awesome power. Americans quickly learned about the dangers posed by nuclear energy, dangers in the form not only of unimaginable destructive power but of radiation sickness and death. Science had been the promise of the future, producing marvels and improving the economy for over a century, but now science was suspect because the future it had promised was threatened by one of its inventions. This attitude was embodied in popular culture and in the cold War tensions which caused many to build fallout shelters in their back yard.
Weart notes the way with which America first viewed the nuclear fireball on television in 1954: "I remember staring in dread fascination at the television that afternoon. . ." (Weart 183). Weart also notes how the increase in fear of nuclear war affected Americans differently than it did Russians, because the Russians had memories of war on their own soil, while Americans did not (Weart 112). Americans may also have started to fear what could happen on American soil as they became more aware of what had already happened on Japanese soil.
In his book War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, John Newhouse addresses issues raised during the nuclear age extending from the conclusion of World War II, when America inaugurated the nuclear age by dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, through the Cold War with its indirect conflicts between the nuclear superpowers, to the present age when fear of nuclear attack has shi...