First, the name
The museum has rebranded: it is now The Atomic Museum — the name its own current films use — though it is 'still widely known by its original name, the National Atomic Testing Museum,' as the anchor episode notes (filmed 2026 under the new branding, with the old name used on camera). Older films in this set carry the old name; nothing is wrong with them, and this page uses the current one. What the museum is: 8,000 square feet combining science, technology and history 'with a little dash of pop culture' — its own staffer's pitch, closing on what he calls the two most powerful words in modern English: atomic and Vegas.
How the bomb built the town
Two films set the museum in its city. The Atomic Vegas feature builds a whole episode around it — exhibits first and longest, then out to the atomic-cocktail trail (a new experimental menu at Atomic Bar inside AREA15; a finish at Atomic Liquors, the oldest bar in Las Vegas). The city's own history short tells the era straight: in the 1950s you could stand at Atomic Liquors with a cocktail and watch for the flash of a bomb test out in the desert; tests were scheduled at dawn so the sky would light up — 'an experience you really couldn't get anywhere else' — and atomic tourism helped put Las Vegas on the map. A TV history episode tours the museum among the city's other memory-keepers — the Neon Museum's rescued signs, the Moulin Rouge sign (the first racially integrated casino resort in Las Vegas), the Green Shack marker.
From the museum's own channel
Four films are the institution speaking. The Stories from the Atomic Age talk unpacks the Miss Atomic Bomb photograph — the showgirl in the cotton-mushroom-cloud swimsuit — including the shoot's outtakes and the singer considered for the press release but not selected. The Distinguished Lecture works the era's pop machinery: the promotional comic books that introduced the bomb to children, protest culture pushing back — the scholarly deep end, hosted by the museum's education director. The Artifact Showcase spends five minutes on one object: a 1946 box of Kix cereal whose advertisement offered children an atomic-bomb ring — how marketers borrowed the bomb's shape without its meaning. The official trailer (2025) and welcome film close the page: ninety seconds of exhibits, and the museum introducing itself in its current name.
Sources: the eight videos on this page — an episode anchored on the museum, a TV history tour, the city's atomic-history short, two museum lecture series films, an artifact showcase, and the museum's trailer and welcome film — summarized from their entries in our catalog.