I understand that, for a nuclear test in the 1950s, the DOE built a mockup of a small town in the Nevada desert, nicknamed either “Doom Town” or “Doom City.” The stock footage of a two-story house being blown apart by a nuclear blast was apparently shot in this town.
My question is…is there a map or a diagram available, anywhere, on what structures there were, and how they were arranged, for that test?
Well, thanks for your time,
Ranchoth
Hello,
I don’t know where to find the map of the city but you can see footage of the explosion in the DVD Bonus of “OSS 117. Le Caire, nid d’espions”.
Oooh… Any ways, I was looking into this and that info could be classified as the city you are talking about was at the Nevada Nation Security Site. So any and all data, that was developed for, leading up to, and collected post test is probably classified. Even if it is worthless, as it dealt with nuclear testing it probably falls under that category regardless.
However, the people to ask would not be the DoD, but the DoE! Here are some videos hosted on the DoE website and if you call up the DoE and ask where to get that map, they might find something for you.
It was called “Survival Town” and was part of Operation Teapot? You can find pictures of buildings and what not but I have not found anything on the city, yet. They may not have made one or it truly was on a piece of paper that someone had. Probably had buildings and other test fixtures at set points from the epicenter.
Tours of Doom Town are available from the DOE.
One ought to be aware that there were multiple similar tests and that the photos are frequently confused.
What are now the most famous photographs of the damaged mannequins - those linked to by electronbee - were part of a sequence taken after a 1955 test by the Life magazine staff photographer Loomis Dean. Some of those of the mannequins appeared on p58 of the 16th May 1955 edition. (If the links don’t work, all issues of Life are available for free on Google Books.) There was then a longer follow-up article in the 30th May edition, concentrating on the effects on the buildings.
However, this wasn’t the first time that Life had run such a feature. The 30th March 1953 edition had had a very similar article, again with photos of mannequins, all from an earlier test.
Furthermore, it’s pretty obvious from the films, the photographs and the descriptions that the set-ups were a bit standardised and can’t really be described as “towns”. It’s a matter of building a couple of houses, to a very rigid design, presumably so that the effects of different bomb designs could be compared.
It’s also the case that the photo in Duckster’s link shows a house of the same design, but apparently much less damaged than the ones highlighted in the Life articles. This is probably another house from the 1955 test. (For anyone planning on taking that tour, that’s a 1950’s photo of the remains, not necessarily what you might see today.)
Incidentally, one oft-overlooked aspect of the Operation Teapot shots in 1955: what happens when you nuke beer?