This idea was short lived, however, with Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister of the UK, stating, "It would.be wrong and imprudent to entrust the secret knowledge or experience of the atomic bomb.to the [United Nations] while it is still in its infancy" (Churchill). While the UN certainly was an infant organization, it was not much less prepared for nuclear weapons than the already established nations of the world. The "Atomic Age" came quickly and abruptly, and was very much a shock to most Americans. People in the 1950s thought that at the rate which science was advancing, there would soon be flying cars, space highways, robots, and all the other new inventions popular culture of the time, such as the TV show The Jetsons, which first aired in 1962, showed that the future would bring. Radioactive skincare products such as Dorothy Gray Salon Cold Cream were made, reflecting how unprepared people were for the "Atomic Age" in not knowing the dangers of new technology. Nuclear technology certainly caused people to believe that science would advance much quicker than it realistically could.
In 1949, the USSR developed its first nuclear weapon, ending the West's nuclear monopoly and beginning a nuclear arms race. Fears of nuclear war grew rapidly, for both citizens and their governments. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov wanted the arms race to come to a halt, as he "pictured whole populations destroyed, centers of world industry, science and culture devastated and ancient shrines of civilizations including great capitals of world nations wiped from the face of the globe" (Salisbury). Fear of the other side using nuclear weapons first united people within their own countries, creating a surge of patriotism in the US and USSR. In the US, this patriotism could be seen through incredibly high birth rates throughout the 1950s. The "baby boom" generation was in large part a result of nuclear weapons and the patriotism they created.
