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Barks made his story
in the heated days when scientists tried to create the ultimate
weapon. Building an atom bomb is not a job for private persons. At
the time, it took thousands of highly skilled scientists to achieve
the result that was revealed by the USA in the last months of the
Second World War.
The world was horrified by the power of the atom bomb and the
devastation it caused in Japan in 1945, and one can only wonder why
Barks deliberately chose an atom
bomb as the main gadget. Of course, Barks would not dream of letting
Donald construct a plausible, devastating bomb, so instead he went
for a special one which emanated radiation rays that 'just' made
people lose their hair.
But Barks'
bomb references were both plentiful and chilling enough. Here are a few
pieces of dialogue from the story:
Donald: I've done it! I've invented the mightiest power of the
ages! An atom bomb - no less!
The nephews respond with
ridicule: That thing an atom bomb? Haw! Haw! - You've been
reading too many books! - Up and Atom!*
Donald: Half a drop will make a big enough explosion! A whole
drop would wreck all the houses in the block!
Professor Mollicule: The rays from the explosion travel through
the air and dissolve whatever it is they dissolve! - If they
dissolve steel, the bomb will be the mightiest weapon in the world!
- Whole cities could be crumbled! And later, after the bomb has
been activated: Run for your life! The rays from the explosion
will spread over this whole area!
Narrative comment: The ghastly rays, like a gust of unseen wind,
sweep toward the city!
All in all, despite the comical elements, Barks did make a fairly
accurate dialogue especially considering that the effects of the
real atom bomb was not at all common knowledge at the time**.
*
A common saying at the time. It derived from an American B-29
Superfortress bomber plane named Up An' Atom, which was configured
to carry an atomic bomb. The name is a word play on the idiom 'Up
and at them', meaning 'There is a lot of work to do' referencing to
the bomber unit's atomic mission. Incidentally, Barks also used the
saying in FC0275 Ancient Persia.
** Interestingly, Barks had, on an earlier occasion,
ventured out on thin ice on another object that was about to
conquer the world in endless shapes and for innumerable purposes. In
the 1940s the plastics industry was in its infancy, producing a weak and
brittle plastic, but the material was never so poor that it would
melt in water as it did in Barks' last animated short cartoon Plastics
Inventor from 1944, in which Donald bakes a plastic airplane
that dissolves in a rainstorm. Obviously, Barks did not know much
about the new material at the time. |
