LAS VEGAS, Feb. 21 -As a crackling voice begins a countdown to zero, a visitor sitting on a bench in a room resembling a concrete bunker knows precisely what to expect - particularly since the room is called the Ground Zero Theater and is in the new Atomic Testing Museum, which opened here to the public on Sunday.
After the countdown, of course, there would be a blast of sound and, on the screen, the sight of a mushroom cloud erupting from the desert sands. It would resemble one of the 100 above-ground nuclear tests that took place 65 miles from the Las Vegas Strip between 1951 and 1963, at the Nevada Test Site.
But in the theater, at the moment of the blast, nearly midway through this museum's unusually sober and informative chronological journey through the history of atomic testing, what was expected is also jolting. In the preceding displays of cultural artifacts and military hardware, of videos showing the development of the cold war and the evolution of atomic testing, and of timelines displaying cultural, political and nuclear history, effects are far less important than information. But here, the impact of the virtual blast is thoroughly visceral. Bursts from air cannons blow against your body imitating the bomb's shock wave; vibrations from subwoofers shake your equanimity. In their theme-park manner, the unexpected effects give some credence to the words of participants in the atomic tests, whose voices are heard in that theater and on video monitors throughout the museum. "There was never a detonation when you weren't scared," one participant said.
And with good reason. When he witnessed the first atomic blast in 1945, the physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer was reminded of verses from the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death/ The shatterer of worlds." Such awe when faced with mighty and final things was expressed throughout the era of atomic testing.
But there was also a great tension in the atomic testing program between that awe and the urge to domesticate it. That tension has left its mark on this museum. At a dedication ceremony on Saturday afternoon the major address was given by Linton F. Brooks, the undersecretary of energy for nuclear security. He said events at the Nevada Testing Site with its 1,375 square miles of desert land, was "integral to America's nuclear deterrent."
Because of the testing program's display of fearsome power during the cold war, Mr. Brooks suggested, "The apocalypse never came." The museum, he said, "helps us celebrate victory in America's longest war." This is why, at the end of the museum's historical survey, a fragment of the Berlin wall is displayed.
But as the museum also suggests, another goal of the Nevada testing program was to strip the bombs of the fear and awe they inspired, to make them seem like ordinary weapons that could be tactically used on the battlefield.
The military, in fact, was almost zealous in its urge to demystify. The museum's ground zero film shows soldiers using brooms to brush the post-blast dust off each other's uniforms; field operations could lead them to within 2,500 yards of the explosion. (One soldier's dented helmet with goggles is on display.) The exhibition also cites a military leader's comment in 1948 that if atomic testing wasn't conducted within the United States, the lack of direct American experience would result in an "unhealthy, dangerous and unjustified fear of atomic detonations."
At any rate, once the Nevada testing program was established, detonations became a feature of American popular culture. Las Vegas featured "atomic" hairdos, "atomic" beauty pageants, and "atomic" souvenirs. Nuclear memorabilia on exhibit here range from atomic cereal box novelties to atomic-bomb-shaped salt and pepper shakers. During the predawn tests, hundreds of cars lined Nevada highways to watch. In 1957 Gladwin Hill wrote in a travel article in The New York Times, "This is the best year in history for the non-ancient but none the less honorable pastime of atom-bomb watching."
Even the Civil Defense material of the period seems to make the unthinkable more thinkable. There are government pamphlets on display: "Defense Against Radioactive Fallout on the Farm" (1964) or "Survival Under Atomic Attack" (1950).
Stripping nuclear testing of fear and awe is also one of the goals of the museum itself, which has, after all, come to life in a company town that may once have had as strong a connection to nuclear testing as to gambling. In the early 1960's, Mercury - the secret village of nuclear workers living on the test site - was the third-largest city in Utah and the test site had the state's largest single payroll. In 1970 the test site was credited with adding $1 billion a year to the Nevada economy. After testing stopped in 1992 and budgets had shrunk, the site still was judged to have an annual economic impact of $350,000.
As for the museum itself, its 8,000-square-foot exhibition space designed by the Canadian firm Andre & Knowlton Associates shares a building with the Desert Research Institute, an environmental research organization that helped found the museum with the Department of Energy. Half the museum's $4.5 million initial costs came from government sources and half from private ones, including corporations still involved at the Nevada Test Site and in military work, like Lockheed Martin and Bechtel Nevada. The museum in fact becomes less compelling as it approaches the present day: it becomes almost promotional in outlining current site activities, which include research with hazardous waste and national defense systems. Displays are devoted to the care taken with the test site's environment, even showing the animals that now thrive on the once-blasted and still-pockmarked desert land.
All this means that the history of testing, as told here, is largely the history of its justification. Problems and issues are noted, including the debates about the effects of fallout that grew more intense as the testing proceeded. But such issues are mentioned and then put aside, to get on with the main story.
Unfortunately, they should be part of the main story: they are part of the risk that was judged worth the benefits. The entire museum would be stronger if it made those risks more palpable, and more directly addressed the fear knitted into the awe: the reasons, for example, epidemiological studies have asserted that childhood leukemia rose in areas affected by fallout; or the ways the Atomic Energy Commission of the early 1950's has been accused of misjudging the effects of radiation and failing to inform the public fully. These issues led to court cases and still hit very close to the museum's Nevada home, which probably explains their neglect here.
Despite this crucial flaw, the museum is still remarkably effective and offers an unusual experience for visitors to Las Vegas who usually explore other forms of risk and benefit. As a Smithsonian affiliate, the museum can share in loans and reach for national prominence. In its historical narrative, some of the peculiarities of nuclear testing begin to make more sense.
Some aspects are often portrayed as fairly silly: setting off nuclear blasts, for example, near constructions of "typical" American homes, complete with mannequins seated at breakfast tables or near pigs that were dressed in military jackets made of different materials. Yet when atomic war was deemed both unthinkable and possible, these were attempts to understand the nature of these weapons and their effects.
When the museum surveys the era of underground testing, it also shows just how extraordinary the scientific aspect of these 828 tests could be: how, for example, events that took place in a blast's first millionth of a second could be studied before the instruments themselves were vaporized.
Ultimately, too, the museum has the advantage of knowing that the strategy of mutually assured destruction, however mad-seeming, also worked: the development of nuclear weapons ensured that neither side would use them. That means, of course, that at some level, the fear and awe remained intact, despite the plentiful souvenirs and the promises of an atomic utopia.
The testing program is now at an end, of course. So is the cold war. Different opponents proliferate; so do different madnesses; and deterrence is weakened. The museum hints as much by displaying a portion of a World Trade Center column not far from its fragment of the Berlin Wall. How will that threat, which may itself become nuclear, be addressed? The museum, despite its accomplishments, leaves many unanswered questions about the past; but this is its gnawing unanswered question about the future.