38. This Family of Mannequins Served as Nuclear Bomb Test Dummies
What could be sweeter than a child at his mother’s knee while his two brothers play on the sofa? Or more picturesque than a perfectly coiffed woman in the 1950s sitting with her children, high heels and pencil skirt intact? Oh, but don’t worry. She won’t stay perfectly intact, and neither will her children. They constructed this family of mannequins to serve as test dummies for nuclear bomb testing that the US carried out during the Cold War. You may have seen movies pay homage to this disturbing era in our country’s history, with dummy ghost towns built near nuclear testing grounds.