Visions of a Nuclear Apocalypse: Notions of Nature in the 1970s Antinuclear Movement

• Main Author: Gulliver, Robyn
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Environment & Society Portal, Rachel Carson Center 2023
• Subjects: Queensland; First Nations
• Online Access: https://arcadia.ub.uni-muenchen.de/arcadia/article/view/367

In 1970s Queensland, widespread concern about the perils of nuclear technology prompted an explosion of protest. Those seeking to avert a nuclear apocalypse used three arguments to mobilize supporters, which still resonate today: erosion of the rights of protesters, workers, and First Nations peoples; profiteering and power grabbing by the nuclear industry; and harms to human health. While nature played an indirect role as a victim in these messages, one of the antinuclear movement’s legacies is its construction of a narrative connecting human survival to nature’s beneficence: in the nuclear age we are no longer the true masters of our own fate.