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Looking back on all of humanity's successes in space, it can be easy to forget that many of our accomplishments have been built on the sacrifices of other creatures. Here are ten animals who played an indispensable role in paving the inter-planetary way to space. More »
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I'll come right out and say it: you need to watch this video. It's quite a bit longer than a lot of what we feature here on io9, but the weekend is almost here, and you owe it to yourself to set aside 53 minutes to watch a veritable scientific dream team talk about humanity's future in space. More »
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It looks like X-Men: First Class isn't the only thing cashing in on Cold War nostalgia this summer. Russia may also be reaching back to the past by reviving a Soviet-era laser project. More »
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The Valkyrie was a plane decades ahead of its time, pushing the aeronautical engineering of the early 1960s well beyond what had been thought possible. It was even slated to become the world's first nuclear powered bomber. More »
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In 1971, the National Emergency Warning Center accidentally told US radio stations to suspend all broadcasts, presumably because the world was ending in a nuclear fireball. It took them 40 minutes to correct this apocalyptic gaffe. More »
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It's been 65 years since a nuclear weapon was used in war. Yet the Doomsday Clock still stands at six minutes to midnight, and there are more than 20,000 nuclear warheads in the world. Here's where they are. More »
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Plenty of alternate history books focus on World War II, but a new series coming in 2011 goes one better. Because World War II played out differently, the Cold War is very different. Including spy cyborgs and super-enhanced terrorists. More »
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Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is a seminal libertarian text, and Heinlein inspired many people to become libertarians. But Heinlein's own views were more varied, and his work dabbles in many different political philosophies. [Mises.org] More »
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This 1984 ad for Starfire Games' Global Thermonuclear War is the superlative of unfortunate. "Do you target for military, industrial, or civilian targets?" Yeesh. The worst part of all? It doesn't appear to tie in with War Games. [Modern Mechanix] More »
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In 1947, Life magazine published an article on how to atomic bomb-proof America: by spreading the entire population across the nation checkerboard style and burying all industry underground. The cost in 2010 money? $5 trillion. [via Ptak Science Books] More »
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Remember the "Doomsday Machine" from Doctor Strangelove? The Soviets built it in 1984: a device that would automatically launch missile strikes against the United States in the event of an attack on Russia. And it's still active, says Wired Magazine. More »
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In the days of duck-and-cover drills and atomic anxiety, many families bought space in bomb shelters, stocking and decorating their possible nuclear homes. Richard Ross's photographs capture the abandoned shelters and what some families planned to take to the apocalypse. More »
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Tony Stark looks across a model of the Stark Expo, in a new Iron Man 2 photo. But the workshop surrounding him is also full of clues to the movie's story (and backstory), judging from a set report. Spoilers below! More »
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Imagine spending months locked in this Latvian bomb shelter. The banner reads "Without Communciations, There Is No Authority. Without Authority, There Is No Victory!" The shelter, now a museum, has a nuclear-blast-absorbing wall and a huge facility for filtering radiation. More »
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If you like retro-futuristic spy tales, you will be intrigued by this collection of KGB spy notebooks, translated online, created during the height of the Cold War. They're all about stealing science secrets. More »
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Back in 1951, Colliers magazine went scifi with a special issue devoted to what would happen if the US occupied Russia. They called it the "preview of the war we do not want." More »
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Here, in a rare filmed performance from 1967, the brilliant political satirist, songwriter, and math professor Tom Lehrer performs his “tribute” to rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his questionable past allegiances. Lehrer also famously set the periodic table to Gilbert & Sullivan, but alas, there isn’t a video of him singing it. If you’re unfamiliar with Lehrer, do yourself a favor and click through! More »
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This Russian Proton rocket, looking like something out of a 60s sci-fi novel, launched yesterday from Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying one of the largest satellites ever built. Arguably the best heavy boost rocket in the world, the Proton is a Cold War relic that's still a workhorse (despite some recent failures) more than forty years after the first one was launched. How did this rocket, one of the deadliest weapons ever created, end up helping North Americans watch European football matches via satellite? More »
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Destination Earth is a nifty little piece of cold-war-era propaganda produced by the American Petroleum Industry in 1956. As the story opens, Mars is a dictatorship under the heel of Ogg the Magnificent, who sends Colonel Cosmic to Earth to find a way to deal with the friction that causes problems with the state limousine (apparently the Martians can’t apply their space vehicle technology to their cars). Luckily, Cosmic lands in the U.S. of A. and discovers the secrets behind our handsome land yachts and happy people (who shoot at him upon landing and departure): lubrication and liberty. More »
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Here's the first teaser trailer for Cold Storage, a new German movie being filmed right now. It's late 1989 in Berlin, and the East Germans are rushing to destroy evidence of bizarre experiments — dating back to World War II — before the Berlin Wall comes down. But it turns out that the bunker containing the experiments wasn't just sealed to keep investigators out, but to keep something else in. More details about Germans confronting the weight of history, after the jump. More »
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From the Cold War vantage point of the early 1960s, the immediate future appeared to be one of impending nuclear annihilation. The savvy homeowner built a bomb shelter for family safety, but how to know when to come out after the big one fell? You couldn't see, feel, hear, taste or smell radiation. That's where a home fallout meter came in handy. Luckily, Popular Science was there to help the consumer understand how they worked and which one to buy. More »
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The Federation goes around exploiting poor third-world planets and taking all their resources in Starve Trek, the most unsubtle parody of Star Trek ever created. (It features Captain Jerk and Mister Squat.) But the lefty comic series is also pretty giggle-worthy, and seeing the (arguably socialist) Trek crew being portrayed as capitalist oppressors is pretty fascinating. Click through for details and a story synopsis. More »
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Three spies crash-land in the Himalayas, where a monk gives them telepathic powers in The Champions, a forgotten British show from 1968. Now fantasy/horror mastermind Guillermo Del Toro is adapting it into a movie for Universal. Del Toro is one of the few auteurs you can trust to update this material without uncritically including the screwy "Far Eastern Monk" archetypes. But will it be a waste of his talents? More »
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Must-read graphic novels are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. More »
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Must-see TV shows are futuristic classics that shouldn't be missed. Of course, not every must-see is perfect. That's why we've rated them 1-5 on the patented "crunchy goodness" scale. More »
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