Monstrosities of the Mushroom Cloud

In celebration of my 200th follower on tumblr, I sent out an invitation for people to suggest topics for me to write up (or who knows, illustrate?) for Wonderful Awful Ideas. Those are coming in a couple of weeks, but first here’s the suggestion from Cro-Magnon Art Critic, which is so good it deserves its own Wonderful Awful post.

It’s about Kaiju.

Okay, so, in the original “Gojira”, the Japanese government comes to the conclusion that the monster was awoken or outright created as a result of the United States’ nuclear testing in the South Pacific. The news is immediately covered up to avoid international panic and the risk of reigniting conflict after a decade of peace following WWII.

My idea is, what if the news got out? What if the world learned that the US had inadvertently (or did they?) unleashed a living force of nature upon the world. Thus, the Cold War now takes an interesting, darker turn as the global powers now look into the prospect of harnessing kaiju as weapons of war, creating abominations from nuclear fallout, capturing vagrant space travelers, or digging up gigantic prehistoric survivors.

In this alternate Cold War, humankind fears not just the mushroom cloud, but whatever monstrosities may come striding out from its shadow.