Product Description

Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero

Visit and experience America’s original nuclear weapons testing sites...

Through the use of spectacular, never-before-seen nuclear test footage, travels to ten former testing sites and explores the history, physical changes resulting from the tests and current condition of these amazing and important places. Visit the notorious Nevada Test Site, known as the most bombed place on earth. Over 900 nuclear explosions where detonated at this location – an area larger than the State of Rhode Island. Once upon a time these locations were kept top secret, but today, with this 60th Anniversary Diamond Edition of Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero, you will finally see these historic hot spots. Preserving the incredible legacy of America’s nuclear testing program stands as a reminder of the fine line between the progress of mankind and the destruction of the earth. Once you understand what really happened at the Ground Zero nuclear testing sites, you will never be the same.

Bonus Segments: - Actual Newsreel Footage of Unarmed Nuke Dropped on South CarolinaTown - Footage of Atomic Tests from Around the World - Slide Show Tours of Nevada Test Site and Hiroshima, Japan - Toursof Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico Test Sites - Atomic Tour Guide: Your Personal Tour Guide to Atomic Locations of the West - Atomic Trailers - Original Score by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra - Exclusive Photo Slide Show

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44166 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 83 minutes

Amazon.com
Our atomic heritage resides in sites all over the country--from the Trinity test area to natural-gas wells in Colorado--and many of them are open to the public. Plan your vacation with Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero, a blast through memory lane narrated by the perfectly suited William Shatner. Never-before-seen footage of test explosions and top-secret and work labs explores the history of America's nuclear programs, and interviews with current and former atomic scientists and engineers give depth to sights such as "the most bombed place on Earth" in Nevada. Learn about nonmilitary uses of nuclear weapons, the rationales behind the different programs, and where you can find these strange places. The musical score is a special bonus, performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in a goodwill gesture of post-cold-war cooperation. --Rob Lightner

Customer Reviews

Kuran does it again!
Trinity and Beyond, Peter Kuran's first atomic bomb documentary, was a marvel to behold. Atomic Journeys is a worthy followup that is special in its own right.

Let's be straightforward: Kuran could have cobbled a film together out of material left on the cutting room floor from Trinity, but instead he came up with a central concept and followed it up not only with beautifully restored archieval footage, but on-site filming and interviews with the people involved in the nuclear testing. This film is a great stand-alone, and shouldn't be written off either as a cheap follow-up or a "lesser" film. It is different than Trinity, but many of the aspects of Trinity that made it such a great film are also present here.

Atomic Journeys is kind of like a nuclear "On the Road," traveling from place to place in the US like nuke-tourists, staring at off-road historical markers that designate where different explosions took place. William Shatner's narration is perfect: his voice has a bass tone that compliments the steady rumble of the test-explosions.

DVD dirt -

The DVD version is actually a "collector's edition," and features many great special features. In addition to a killer 5.1 track, there is an insightful director's commentary as well as several short snippets from on-site shooting with Verne the Nuclear Tour Guide. There are detailed maps for the travel-minded viewer, but the real gems of this disc (besides the movie, of course!) are several short films produced in other countries about nuclear testing, including a Soviet "Civil Defense" movie about building canals with nuclear weapons, a British film honoring a ship they used in a nuclear test, and a French film of nuclear testing in the Sahara desert.

I can recommend this DVD to anyone who enjoyed "Trinity," the historically-minded, the fan of nuclear movies, and anyone looking for an unintentionally humorous (in a dark way) look at America's proud nuclear tradition.

A RARE look at our Nuclear History !!!
Being someone who has worked with the Dept. of Energy ( D.O.E ), toured some of the rarest nuclear weapons sites, been a broadcast engineer/hobbist for 10 Years, and am creating my own special documentary about all things nuclear after 9 years of research; I have found Peter Kuran's work ABSOUTELY PERFECT in every detail, ESPECIALLY in his Film transfers to DVD. He has had access to some of the most recently declassified original films from the DOE archives. Most documentary's simply re-hash some of the same footage I've seen over and over again, but not Peter's. If you're interested in our nuclear history, I've seen all and would recommend ALL of the documentary's by www.vce.com.

In a side note, for the person looking for the expermental bunker.......It's called the GREENBRIER HOTEL. You can see some of it's history at: Http://www.greenbrier.com/docs/history.html

I hope that's what your looking for.

Relive "Duck & Cover" in living color.
A documentary that uses previously classified B&W and color footage and powerful symphonic music to fully express the forbidding destructive power of nuclear weapons, Welcome To Ground Zero is the second of four DVD's (that I'm aware of) dedicated to exposing the visual truth behind the testing of nuclear weapons from the mid-1940's through their banishment in the 1970's. Ground Zero concentrates on below ground nuclear tests, and the sight of entire islands rising 25 feet or more into the air and falling back to their foundations in a godlike thud can be quite sobering. This is not an anti-nuclear diatribe, nor is it pro nuclear power. Rather, it simply observes and describes what took place in the infancy of our nuclear life, leaving you to determine which end of the scale this branch of science rests: outrageously dangerous or benignly beneficial. Well worth the price of admission - and one way to prove to your friends how useless "Duck & Cover" would have been in a real nuclear blast.