SUMMARY
Following the massive destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the end of Second World War, the atom was generally taken to be the primary symbol of the new era, the so-called ‘atomic age’, a prototypical modern conjuncture forever oscillating between the agonies of mass death and standardized terror, and the euphoria of tremendous economic transformation through the permanent resolution of the ever increasing need for electrical energy at little or no cost. After Hiroshima the symbolic meaning and presence of the atom crossed and recrossed the lines between popular culture, lived experience, political protest, strategic discourse, modern design, industry, medicine, and agriculture, that it truly became ‘atomic age’ whether one was in the US, France, China or anywhere else.