Nuke Pop: Popular Culture Images of Nuclear War • Credits

Radioactive Rambos

Radioactive Rambos
Comic book cover with two men fighting and text, Let Out the Beast by Leonard Fischer. The world destroyed by atom bombs.
Stories of postholocaust battles in the radioactive wasteland had been around since the fifties, as in this rare Canadian novel, but usually there had been a certain moral earnestness about them, at least a token attempt to deplore the end of civilization.
On the cover we see a college professor turned savage defending his wife in a duel fought with pieces of a barbecue set.
Book cover: Person's face with dark sunglasses looking through flames and text, The Survivalist: Mid-wake. A super survivalist adventure leads John Thoman Rourke on a deadly underwater mission. By Jerry Ahern
But in the eighties there arose a new generation of postholocaust heroes, what I call “Radioactive Rambos.” The archetype is Jerry Ahern’s John Thomas Rourke, a former CIA agent who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and now roams the ruined earth battling the vicious Communists who are trying to dominate the few survivors left in the rubble.
The success of Ahern’s Survivalist series, eventually running to some nineteen volumes and claimed sales at one point of over five million copies, spawned a vast number of imitations
Blood and Bones: Eagleheart #3 by C. T. Westcott. The life story of will Bucko, futuristic fighter pilot, concludes. The autobiography of Colonel WIlliam T. Bucko, ace pilot of the Federal Air Command, concludes in this third volume (next part underlined in red) filled with action, romance and mutants.
featuring, as this advertisement for the third volume in the Eagleheart series states, “action, romance and mutants.”
Book cover - man with gun on road with vehicle chasing him and text, Phoenix #2: Ground Zero by David Alexander; When the rain of nuclear bombs stopped the reign of terror began.
“When the rain of nuclear bombs stopped, the reign of terror began.”
Book cover with man grimacing and holding gun and text, Endworld #11: Liberty Run by David Robbins; The Russians had destroyed the world - now they wanted to rule what was left of it.
“The Russians had destroyed the world– Now they wanted to rule what was left of it.”
Book cover: Man with exploding gun, Seattle Space Needle in background and text, Endworld #14: Seattle Run by David Robbins; The only good mutant is a dead mutant.
“The Only Good Mutant is a Dead Mutant”
The Seattle space needle seems to have survived remarkably well in this one.
Book cover: Person's face and hand rising out of ocean waves and text, Death Lands: Red Holocaust by James Axler; Adventure and suspense in the midst of a new reality. When all is lost, there's always a future.
The frustrations created by the decades-long cold war are released as the survivors struggle ruthlessly for the scraps that remain after the fall of civilization:
“When all is lost, there’s always the future. But the future in a world shrouded in the radioactive red dust clouds of a generation-old global nuclear war depends on finding hidden caches of food, weapons and technology-the legacy of a preholocaust society-stashed in lonely outposts known as redoubts. When Ryan Cawdor discovers a redoubt in the bitter freakish wasteland that now passes for Alaska, he also uncovers a new threat to a slowly reemerging America. Roaming bands of survivors have crossed the Bering Strait from Russia to pillage Alaska and use it as the staging ground for an impending invasion of America. In Deathlands, the war for domination is over, but the struggle for survival continues.”
Book cover: man with big knife and desolation in the background and text, The Outrider #2: Fire and Ice by Richard Harding; After Armageddon, one rugged survivor blazes down the treacherous highways of a ravaged America.
In most of these new novels, the hero is a loner, like the classic Western gunfighter, he arrives in town, although on a motorcycle or in a souped-up van rather than on a horse, and slaughters vast numbers of villains with ruthless aplomb, then rides off to kill again.
“After Armageddon, one rugged survivor blazes down the highways of a ravaged America.”
Book cover: Man looking tough and woman looking scared with text, Traveler #2 by B. B. Brenn; A postnuke wasteland, he's the only hero we've got!
Survival in these novels means willingness to kill. The nuclear war has exhausted the atomic arsenal and made the world safe for conventional weapons once more.
“In a postnuke wasteland, he’s the only hero we’ve got!”
Most of the volumes in this series were written by cyberpunk author John Shirley, who gave them a loopy originality which mocked the genre they came from.
Book cover with fist holding burning Declaration of Independence in front of a nuclear mushroom cloud and the text, After nuclear war America's only chance for freedom is the... Doomsday Warrior #5: America's Last Declaration by Ryder Stacy;
The police are dead, the armies vanished, and the Radioactive Rambo careens through the ruins blasting commies, mutants, and vicious bikers alike with exhilarating abandon.
“After Nuclear War, America’s only chance for freedom is the…Doomsday Warrior”
Book cover: man with rocket launcher, soldier, rocket, woman and dog with text, The Rabid Brigadier by Craig Sargent - the Last Ranger 4 - Across post-nuclear America he fights to stop a war-crazed general's countdown to doomsday!
Radioactive Rambos are not establishment figures; they reject the authority of their own government as well as that of the enemy. Here a remnant of the U.S. Army must be defeated.
The hero of this series rides carries his pet pit bull with him on his motorcycle.
The blonde with the open blouse appears nowhere in the novel.
“Across post-nuclear America he fights to stop a war-crazed general’s countdown to doomsday!”
Two comic panels: the first has two people in radioactive suits; the second shows them from the perspective of a man, far away watching them.
True survivalist fiction is rare and obscure, however. There were three issues published of this crude comic book depicting the heroic struggles of survivalists against their own government after the war.In this story, the U.S. government ruthlessly hunts down the survivors cowering in the ruins of New York.
“The subway entrance up the street is barred from the inside. The ones that are still alive are paranoid, and armed–so when you blow the doors off, tell the men to go in shooting…”
“What about the ones who don’t resist? I mean some of them might not be sick.”
“You know the directive Sgt. Everyone is to be considered contaminated and therefore must be…..destroyed, and that includes EVERYONE.”
It’s not entirely clear what “paranoid” means in this context.
Book cover with man holding gun in front of a phoenix rising (white bird) with text, Out of the Ashes - a novel by William W. Johnstone - The nightmare of war. The dream of America reborn.
“The Nightmare of War…The dream of America reborn”
Many of these writers can barely disguise their glee at having their heroes revel in the postholocaust anarchy. William W. Johnstone goes further by seeing the nuclear war as a cleansing apocalypse which will destroy all weak-kneed liberals, protesting college students, and labor unions and make possible the creation of a reactionary utopia.
Book cover for MadMax: Beyond Thunderdome with images of the characters in the film with weapons. Text: Based on a screenplay. Written by Terry Hayes and George Miller. Novelization by Joan D. Vince
The radioactive Rambo archetype was firmly established in the public mind by the hugely successful series of Mad Max films from Australia.
Cartoon: Little Mad Max with text: Sometime after the last atomic war... And little boy in hat saying, Goshes! I'm mad! Goshes! I'm the only one left! Uh-oh! My robot toys got all gucky from a nuclear firestorm. Wanhhhhh!
Cartoonist Bill Griffith satirized the popularity of these movies by reviving an obscure fifties comic book character named “Little Max,” transforming him into “Little Mad Max.”
Book cover picturing adolescent boy with broken bat and girl with purse afraid. Text: FireBrats #1 The Burning Land by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel. Yesterday they were two kids in a normal world. Today nuclear war. Tomorrow...
So popular did the theme become that a series of similar novels, with less sex and violence, was created for teenaged readers. The hero of this novel worries a lot about getting to kiss the heroine and hanging on to his letter jacket while searching for his family, who were away from home when nuclear war broke out.
Book cover with tank surrounded by dust cloud and text, The Zone #1: Hard Target by James Rouch; In the war of the future, death is as bloody as ever!
In a related but distinctly different genre, more conventional stories of World War III in Europe were popular in the eighties. In these, nuclear weapons usually play a minor role, and the traditional military values are exalted.
“In the war of the future, Death is as bloody as ever!”
(How reassuring!)
Comic cover with military man with gun in cemetery and mushroom cloud in background with text, Team Yankee - Birmingham and Minsk nuked - New York and Moscow next?
For some reason, these novels were especially popular in Great Britain. The Zone was a British series, and it was former NATO commander General Sir John Hackett who wrote the scenarios of World War III which inspired the bestseller, Team Yankee, here turned into a comic book.
Book cover: illustration of city over vampire mouth and text, Vampire Winter by Lois Tilton; For more than a hundred years he walked only by night. Now the night was endless.
Every conceivable genre has been given the nuclear war treatment. There are nuclear war westerns, nuclear war detective novels and ghost stories, nuclear war pornography, and even a nuclear war vampire novel.
The long night of nuclear winter makes an ideal environment for a vampire, of course.

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