Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'nuclear weapons'

The Saddest Anthem in the World

September 29th, 2022 · Comments Off on The Saddest Anthem in the World

The lyrics for national anthems are usually testaments to a country’s finer aspects—its gorgeous scenery, perhaps, or the indomitable fighting spirit of its longtime (though not necessarily original) residents. One notable exception is the anthem of Bikini Atoll, the South Pacific island that the United States destroyed with nuclear weapons tests in the early years […]

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Atlantic Heavy

October 28th, 2021 · 1 Comment

Cornell’s digital collection of persuasive maps has a lot to sift through, and a great deal of the material is guaranteed to raise eyebrows. (To the curators’ credit, they haven’t shied away from including malevolent propaganda from days of yore.) I’m partial to a bunch of the more lighthearted maps, such as this Greyhound promotional […]

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Life in Limbo

October 4th, 2012 · 2 Comments

Please take a moment today to check out this astounding collection of mid-1970s photos from Ujelang Atoll, a Micronesian speck that once played host to nuclear refugees from nearby Enewetak. When these particular photos were taken, the Enewetakese had been in exile for three decades, after being bounced from their homes so the United States […]

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Tougher Than His Rep

September 7th, 2012 · 4 Comments

The common narrative about the end of the Cold War is that the Soviet Union’s decline began to inevitably steepen on the day that Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency. His peanut-farming predecessor, the conventional wisdom goes, was too soft to strike fear into the heart of the Kremlin, as evidenced by the Soviets willingness to […]

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Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That

November 17th, 2011 · 2 Comments

It’s been far too long since I posted about suicide, a Microkhan staple since this project’s earliest days. Let me rectify that oversight by quoting from this 1971 study of mortality among Hiroshima survivors. One might expect such unfortunate souls to be so psychologically traumatized by their experiences that they would be unusually prone to […]

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