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America's post-World War II period is often portrayed as a time of affluence and contentment, but fear of atomic war and Communist infiltration also marked the era and affected the decisions Americans made about their lives and futures. Fear of atomic bomb attacks on the nation's cities helped motivate people to move to the relative safety of the suburbs. Some Americans built fallout shelters to protect their families while others, shocked by the prospect of nuclear annihilation at any moment, sought to live for the present.

Once the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, Americans realized a new era in history, one defined by the ability of humans to destroy their world.

Positive portrayals of atomic bomb blasts, along with toys and games that made light of atomic bomb destruction like those in the case below, may have helped diffuse some of the fear the American public felt about the bomb by desensitizing them to the devastation an atomic bomb could cause.

By the late 1950s, officials of the Eisenhower administration, after having seen the results of numerous atomic bomb tests, had a fairly realistic idea of how difficult it would be to survive a nuclear bomb blast. They continued, however, to disseminate somewhat dubious survival information, primarily to give the American public a sense of hope and control over their own lives. They also believed that a public confident of surviving an atomic war would support the federal government's decision to increase its own atomic arsenal, even though its existence could provoke a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Animated classic presenting what an atom is, how energy is released from certain kinds of atoms, the peacetime uses of atomic energy and the byproducts of nuclear fission.

The atomic age has moved forward at such a pace that every citizen of the world should have some comprehension, at least in comparative terms, of the extent of this development, of the utmost significance to every one of us.Clearly, if the peoples of the world are to conduct an intelligent search for peace, they must be armed with the significant facts of today's existence.

scientists unraveled the structure of the atom, revealing the electron and proton. 

in 1938 fission of uranium atoms by neutrons was carried out in Germany. The energy associated with fission opened the possibility for powerful weapons and also the production of energy for civilian use.

The United Nations attempted to develop a policy for control of nuclear weapons, but the United States and the Soviet Union could not agree. This was but one component of the emerging Cold War between the two nations. Citizens of all nations saw the power of nuclear fission as massive threat as well as a source of useful energy for mankind.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Atoms for Peace Speech

The Manhattan Project was the code name for the U.S. effort during World War II to produce the atomic bomb. The program was under the leadership of Gen. Leslie Groves, and theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The main laboratory was built on an isolated mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The first atomic bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945.