Nuke York, New York: Nuclear Holocaust in the American
Imagination from Hiroshima to 9/11 Mick Broderick and Robert
Jacobs Discussed Manhattan (it is a success). Decided to tell
Stalin about it […Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes
in. I am sure they will whenManhattan appears over their
homeland. -President Truman, Personal Diary, July 18, 1945
Collier's, 5 August 1950. Cover art by Chesley Bonestell. Almost
immediately after 9/11, cultural tropes that had long been
associated with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were relocated to new roles as descriptors of the attack on New
York City. Where once terms like "ground zero" referred to the
detonation points of the nuclear weapons that were dropped in
Japan, Ground Zero now refers to the site where the World Trade
Center towers once stood in lower Manhattan.1 This appropriation
of framing mechanisms from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to New York
City was nothing new: it held true to an American tradition that
began in August of 1945. When Ameri