Between 1951 and 1992, the United States detonated 928 nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of the Strip, and the Atomic Testing Museum near you documents how Las Vegas turned the apocalypse into tourism.
In the early 1950s, mushroom clouds were visible from downtown Las Vegas on clear mornings, rising tens of thousands of feet above the desert horizon. Rather than evacuating or protesting, Las Vegas embraced the spectacle. Hotels advertised atomic viewing opportunities. Bars created atomic cocktails. The Chamber of Commerce published blast calendars so tourists could plan their visits around scheduled detonations. A local beauty pageant crowned Miss Atomic Bomb, her sash shaped like a mushroom cloud. The proximity to nuclear testing was marketed as a selling point.
The psychology of this response tells you something important about Las Vegas: it is a city that has always reframed danger as entertainment, that has metabolized anxiety into spectacle, that has looked at something terrifying and asked how to sell tickets. The Cold War was real. The radiation was real — atomic veterans who participated in the tests suffered devastating health consequences. But in Las Vegas, the bombs were showtime, and showtime was what the city did best.