Dr. Strangelove, Nuclear Bomb Effects Computer

replica movie prop

In the final scene of the blackest and funniest movie ever filmed concerning nuclear armageddon, the President's advisor Dr. Strangelove suggests that perhaps a chosen few can still survive the upcoming holocaust by taking refuge in the country's deepest mines until the danger from nuclear fallout has passed, and uses a handy circular calculator to quickly figure the odds.

How long would you have to stay down there?

Well let's see now...  Cobalt thorium g...  Radioactive half life of... I would think that, possibly, 100 years?

You mean people could actually stay down there for 100 years?

It would not be difficult Mein Fuhrer! 

This is an actual vintage nuclear bomb effects calculator, made of plastic and consisting of 4 rotating discs with 2 transparent calipers, based on data from and also included with the 1962 edition of the US Government publication "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons".  A wide variety of nuclear effects, including blast parameters, initial nuclear radiation, thermal radiation, velocity with which humans and glass are thrown by nuclear blast (!), and fallout dose rate, can be calculated.