AllMovie

Political humorist Bob Harris takes the viewer on a darkly humorous look at America's fascination with nuclear weapons. "The Bomb" has shaped American consciousness since World War II, which ended with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. Nuclear bombs range in power from the powerful to the more powerful. A "megaton" is the explosive power of one million tons of TNT. A "kiloton" is the power of one thousand tons of TNT. The bombs used against the Japanese were in the ten- to 20-kiloton range. Those less powerful bombs are now available to terrorists, while the more powerful bombs belong to the world powers, like the United States, France, and Russia. The strangeness of all this nuclear power, Cold War fears, secret government films of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, and nuclear decontamination with a whisk broom are some of the highlights in this entertaining but disturbing film.