During the Cold War, popular culture provided Americans with images of (and a vocabulary for) nuclear war. Mushroom clouds, DEFCON alerts, exploding buildings, fallout-shelter signs—these visuals popped up in even the frothiest forms of entertainment, including comic books, James Bond movies, and music videos. The possibility of a nuclear holocaust was always lurking in the background, like the figure of Death hiding among revelers in a Bosch triptych, and we could imagine it because it had been shown to us many times on screens big and small.