COLD COMFORT ·
COLD COMFORT ·
US Government Nuclear Bunker, USA. In the 1960s, a 112,000-square-foot nuclear bunker was secretly built beneath the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia to house all 535 members of the U.S. Congress. Hidden behind blast doors disguised as hotel walls, it was meant to keep government running after a nuclear strike. Guests attended conferences in rooms that doubled as congressional chambers, unaware they were inside a classified fallout shelter. Behind a door marked “Danger: High Voltage – Keep Out” were dormitories, a cafeteria with painted windows, a hospital, and even a small jail.
COLD COMFORT: THE ATOM AND US
We built a button that could end the world, then relied on luck, protocol, and a few sweaty phone calls to keep it from happening. Nuclear technology is both our most ingenious achievement and our most catastrophic mistake.
We have nearly blown ourselves up by accident more times than we would like to admit. Meanwhile nuclear medicine quietly saves millions every year, and nuclear waste will outlast civilization itself.
Today, the Doomsday Clock - humanity’s countdown to extinction - stands at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been.
This project explores the absurdity of the atomic age: secret weapons labs, hospitals using isotopes to save lives, fallout shelters for politicians, the architecture of survival, fusion machines that look like spaceships, and a culture that turned annihilation into comic books, candy bars, and cocktails. Nuclear power is a story of both destruction and salvation — the glowing dream, and the nightmare beneath it.
The atom is innocent. The fallout belongs to us.
Project ongoing …. book coming Autumn 2027
Shot over more than a decade and several continents, the project includes facilities such as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Nevada National Security Site, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, ITER, Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Station, the headquarters of the IAEA, Sellafield, a Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Silo, the Onkalo deep nuclear waste repository and more.
X-10 Graphite Reactor, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA. The world’s first continuously operating nuclear reactor, built to produce plutonium for atomic bombs and later to supply life saving medical isotopes.
Oak Ridge was born in secrecy in 1943, a fenced city of 75,000 people built to refine uranium for the bomb. Workers lived, ate, and raised families without knowing their true purpose until Hiroshima. After the war, the site became Oak Ridge National Laboratory, turning from weapons to research. The labs now house some of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
Trinitite, New Mexico, USA, 1945. A glassy mineral created when the first atomic bomb test at Trinity fused desert sand into stone.
Nuclear Explosion Fallout Calculator. A U.S. Army tool for estimating radiation exposure after a nuclear blast, used to predict dose rates over time.
"Apple-2" house used in atomic bomb test at the Nevada National Security Site. The test on May 5, 1955 was intended to test various building construction types in a nuclear blast. An assortment of buildings, including residential houses were constructed at the site nicknamed "Doom Town". The buildings were populated with mannequins, and stocked with different types of canned and packaged foods. Not all of the buildings were destroyed in the blast.
Glenn T. Seaborg Identification Card, Manhattan Project era. American chemist who co-discovered plutonium and nine other elements, shaping both nuclear weapons and medicine.
Uranium Dentures. In the 1940s, manufacturers began adding uranium to the porcelain powder used to make dentures. The idea was that the fluorescence of the uranium would help mimic the look of real teeth under a variety of natural and artificial light conditions.
Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Arizona, USA. The Titan II carried the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States — nine megatons, roughly 600 times the force of Hiroshima and three times the explosive power of every bomb detonated during World War II, including the atomic ones.
Control room of Titan II Missile. Fifty-four missiles stood on 24-hour alert across Arizona, Arkansas, and Kansas. Each 32-metre rocket could launch in under a minute and reach the Soviet Union in about 30 minutes, travelling at 26,000 km/h. A single detonation would create a fireball five kilometres wide and deliver fatal burns within 32 kilometres.
British Missile Early Warning System, Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, United Kingdom. From here, data from radar stations across the UK and the United States was analysed to confirm an incoming nuclear attack and trigger the four-minute warning that would have been broadcast to the nation.
Created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock is a measure of how close humanity is to wiping itself out. Originally at seven minutes to midnight, it now stands at 85 seconds — the closest ever.
Built in 1978 beneath the Las Vegas desert by millionaire Jerry Henderson, this 1,400 m² fallout shelter was designed as a complete underground home — artificial trees, painted horizons, and lighting to mimic sunrise and sunset. Henderson recreated the views from his other houses around the world and added a swimming pool, two hot tubs, a dance floor with pole, a bar, and a putting green. For five years, he and his wife Mary lived out the Cold War fantasy of comfort below ground.
Nuclear Family, United Kingdom, 1980s. The term “nuclear family” emerged in the mid-20th century, borrowing the language of atomic science to describe a self-contained household — parents and children — imagined as the basic unit of a stable postwar society.
Nuclear Fusion and Weapons Research Facility, USA. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California stands the world’s largest laser — the National Ignition Facility. Built to maintain the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal without testing, it can recreate the same extreme conditions found in stars or nuclear explosions. On December 5, 2022, it achieved a historic first: a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed.
In January 2018, a state employee in Hawaii accidentally sent a public alert warning of an incoming ballistic missile, triggering 38 minutes of panic before officials confirmed it was a false alarm. Families took shelter, drivers abandoned cars, and cell networks jammed — all caused by one wrong click during a routine drill.
The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee uses the world’s most powerful pulsed neutron source for research on the structure of matter. More than 4,500 tonnes of steel surround the impact point to contain the reaction.
Nuclear Incident Response Training Site, USA. Located 105 km northwest of Las Vegas, the Nevada National Security Site was once the stage for over 1,000 nuclear detonations. At the T-1 training area, four nuclear devices were exploded between 1952 and 1957. The remaining trace radiation in the soil is now used to train emergency teams to respond to radiological attacks. Built after the 9/11 attacks, the site simulates a small American town struck by a nuclear or dirty bomb — complete with fake shops, wrecked cars, and aircraft.
At the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, more than 200 people and several pets are preserved in cryogenic suspension inside steel dewars cooled by liquid nitrogen. The bodies are stored upside down so the head remains frozen longest if nitrogen levels drop — a precaution meant to survive any crisis, even global collapse. Rooted in the same Cold War logic that built fallout shelters, Alcor represents a new kind of reset: the hope that technology can not only endure catastrophe but reverse it — outlasting both nuclear extinction and death itself.
Onkalo Spent Nuclear Fuel Repository, Finland. The Onkalo tunnel extends more than 400 metres into ancient bedrock, designed to store the country’s spent nuclear fuel for at least 100,000 years — longer than any civilisation has lasted. Copper canisters will be buried in clay and sealed within the rock, intended to remain safe long after our languages and nations have vanished.