radioactive nation building

is an idea that points to the massive scale of organizational structures and state infrastructure undertaken during the cold war which is so immense that it 'renders the security state largely invisible to its citizens who walk everyday in its infrastructure, rely on its technoscientific products, and unknowingly carry traces of its toxic effects in their bodies.

the project of 'radioactive nation-building' undertaken during the Cold War remain in thedeep organizational structures of American life, not least in the commitmentto secrecy 'as a means of socially regulating American society.'9 The scale of the state infrastructure established with the nuclear program, argues Masco, is so immense that it 'renders the security state largely invisible to its citizens who walk everyday in its infrastructure, rely on its technoscientific products, and unknowingly carry traces of its toxic effects in their bodies.' 10 Just as internment and Los Alamos provide models for the Cold War security state, then, the preoccupations of the Cold War continue to structure much of post-Cold War life. (Beck 2009: 6) -Dirty Wars Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature John Beck

radioactive nation building, n.All

radioactive nation building