Scholars and pundits have often argued  that bomb films contribute to or reflect a “cyclical” pattern in the culture; that is to say, alternating periods of intense anxiety followed by “numbness” to the bomb. It has also been argued that in some years bomb films have “disappeared.” None of these writers, however, provide any empirical evidence to substantiate their claims.
 
My own analyses of the distribution of approximately one thousand bomb films (from 1914 to 2000), however, has led me to very different conclusions about how cultures respond to nuclear issues.



So, in the early stages of my research I began by identifying as many bomb films as possible, and then I did some simple descriptive analysis. What I found is that the numbers and distributions of bomb films simply do not substantiate these other scholars' claims.
 
Throughout Atomic Bomb Cinema I discuss and criticize the scholarly literature, and analyze the statistical distributions of the films. My most detailed discussions are in Chapter 5 (pages 141-42) and Chapter 6 (pages 171-72); and, the book contains a complete Filmography (pages 359-78). (There is also a selected bibliography, pages 351-57.)
 
 
Rather than include the tables and graphs in the book, however, I decided to make these available through the World Wide Web, so others may more easily use and analyze the data and confirm or refute my conclusions.
 

In this section of atomicbombcinema.com, I present all of my relevant tables and graphs. The tables may be downloaded, as either MS Word document files, or as PDF files (which require the  free * Adobe Acrobat Reader).
 
 
 
  Download FREE Acrobat Reader here