While everyone had assumed that 1) Putin would never dare to actually invade Ukraine and that 2) if he did, it would never go on this long, they were all mistaken on both counts. As of March 27th, it is three-hundred and ninety-seven days into the invasion, and talk of nuclear war only continues to mount. Especially as Putin speaks of storing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, a maneuver that has been deemed a way to take said country as a “nuclear hostage” to the whims of the dictator swinging his “missile” around as leverage. By stationing missiles there, not only is Belarus a hostage, but the rest of the world becomes a prisoner to the irascibility of a man who wants to be able to constantly have the threat of “the button” on his side. And yet, when so many men in the past, including Putin contemporaries Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, have made this threat only as a means to “flex,” it becomes a case of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”—not that anyone has a problem with that in this scenario. It’s just that, the more a threat like this is made, the more idle it becomes. For one has to be willing to be insane enough to know that in pressing the button, they’re effectively kamikazeing themselves.
Although everyone loves to condemn a baby boomer, it has to be said that no one knows better than said generation what it means to live under the anxieties of ceaseless nuclear threat. Ergo, the pervasiveness of music centered on the topic in the boomer heyday. Whether Sheldon Allman’s “Crawl Out Through the Fallout” and “Radioactive Mama,” Ian Campbell’s “The Sun Is Burning” (also covered by Simon & Garfunkel), The Fugs’ “Kill For Peace,” Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” or Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Wooden Ships,” there was no shortage of grandiose numbers or “little ditties” about the subject matter. Some used music to make light of the situation as best they could. This included Allman, who sings on “Radioactive Mama,” “Well, when we get together, clear away the crowd/There won’t nothing left except a mushroom-shaped cloud.” Allman also adds, “Your kisses do things to me in oh so many ways/I feel them going through me, all those gamma, gamma rays.” Because if we can’t joke about things like this, then honestly, how are we supposed to get through it?
The thing is, being out of the boomer era and on to a new one where everything is a potential source of offense, it would be unfathomable for songs like Allman’s to be released today. Including “Crawl Out Through the Fallout,” wherein he sardonically urges, “Crawl out through the fallout, baby/To my loving arms/Through the rain of Strontium-90” and then notes, for good tongue-in-cheek measure, “I’ll love you all your life/Although that may not be too long,” as well as, “Crawl out through the fallout back to me/‘Cause you’ll be the only girl in the world.” And no, this certainly isn’t what Rihanna had in mind when she said, “Want you to make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world.” Indeed, by the time the 2010s rolled around, nuclear war had become a far less chic topic in music, having reached a crescendo in the 1980s with singles such as Blondie’s “Atomic,” Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House,” Rush’s “Between the Wheels” and Ultravox’s “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.”
With the 80s seeing the greatest spike in Cold War tensions of the twentieth century, things calmed down (or at least pretended to) in the decades beyond. Perhaps so much so that musicians forgot altogether how terrifying it was for people to live through the perpetual pall of nuclear war’s dark shadow. Hence, while Charli XCX and MARINA use the words “nuclear” and “radioactive” to describe a relationship, they do so with the level of cavalier apathy so often credited to a millennial. At the same time, it was as though they both somehow had their finger on the pulse of what was to come in the next decade, with MARINA’s “Radioactive” appearing on 2012’s Electra Heart and Charli’s “Nuclear Seasons” appearing on 2013’s True Romance. Regardless of the years that each album came out, both singles, eerily enough, were initially released in 2011. What’s more, by putting the songs out during this moment in time, they also had the advantage of doing so when it wasn’t such a “hotbed” issue to wield such terms as metaphors. Which both of them do. For Charli, the “nuclear season” she refers to is a relationship that’s about to blow up as she announces, “We in the nuclear season/In the shelter I’ll survive this though.” Because a fallout shelter remains, evidently, a timeless symbol in our fucked-up world. MARINA, then Marina and the Diamonds, also knew how to brandish the trope in her first single from Electra Heart, singing, “When you’re around me, I’m radioactive/My blood is burning, radioactive/I’m turning radioactive/My blood is radioactive/My heart is nuclear/Love is all that I fear.” Roughly ten years on, however, the thing one ought to fear most is the total lack of potential for love in the world. For there should be no concern on MARINA’s part about love even being an option in this loveless, AI hellscape.
So sure, if baby boomers thought it was bad to grow up being shown the “Duck and Cover” video in elementary school, they can take comfort in knowing that the rest of us are probably worse off for having nuclear war used as love metaphors rather than a legitimate source of concern. In said 1951 informational video from the Federal Civil Defense Administration, Bert the Turtle shows kids “what we all must learn to do.” Which is crawl into our “shells” and hide. The carapace that most white children were expected to have being a fallout shelter. Thus, the narrator assuring the white students watching, “Be sure to get into the house fast, where your parents have fixed a safe place for you to go.”
For those NYC Black kids who were lucky enough, maybe their building had a community fallout shelter in the basement that’s since been converted into a shitty laundry room. Otherwise, it was probably tough titty. For we can’t pretend it’s not part of the racially-prejudiced dictator’s aim to wipe out the marginalized. Which is exactly what would have happened in the 50s and early 60s if a bomb had actually detonated. Because only the white folks were investing in bomb shelters. After all, the financial disparity between white and Black Americans at that time was an even more considerable factor. Not to mention the racially assumptive policies of civil defense that deliberately chose to ignore that people of color did not have the same resources as the “ideal” of the day: the suburban, white, middle-class nuclear (ironic, yes) family.
So maybe it is nice to have Charli and MARINA “equalize” the bomb by making it a love metaphor (and yes, a toxic one). One that redefines what the narrator in “Duck and Cover” says: “The bomb can explode any time of year, day or night.” Yes, the love bomb sure can. Elsewhere, our narrator promises, “Older people will help us, as they always do.” A big presumption that obviously didn’t take into account how selfish the modern adult would become. The narrator makes certain to include the caveat, “But there might not be any grown-ups around when the bomb explodes.”
“Grown-up” (an illusory term) present or not, the idea that ducking and covering was really going to spare anyone from nuclear fallout was both precious and self-deluding—and likely a huge government conspiracy designed to placate the masses. Which is why they could write off nuclear attack as being just another “little danger” to potentially be prepared for as viewers of the video are soothed, “We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous. Since it may be used against us, we must get ready for it. Just as we are ready for many other dangers that are around us all the time.” No one thought to point out that these dangers (e.g., fires, earthquakes) were not needlessly designed by the government.
And so, even now, we all just keep hoping for the best in terms of how “prepared” we are. That these dictators are merely pathetic man-boys crying wolf, but would never actually greenlight the mushroom cloud. Plus, if no one is around anymore to oppress, where’s the fun in that to a dictator?
