[2][3][4] It is a compilation of clips from newsreels, military training films, and other footage produced in the United States early in the Cold War on the subject of nuclear warfare.

Without any narration, the footage is edited and presented in a manner to demonstrate how misinformation and propaganda was used by the U.S. government and popular culture to ease fears about nuclear weapons among the American public.

[7] The film covers both the impact of the atomic bomb on popular culture and daily life, as well as documents the military's increasing fascination with carrying out more and more dangerous tests.

The following people are shown in excerpts from speeches, interviews and news reports, along with several unnamed actors, civilians, members of the armed forces and narrators: Lloyd Bentsen, William H. P. Blandy, Owen Brewster, Frank Gallop, Lyndon Johnson, Maurice Joyce, Nikita Khrushchev, Brien McMahon, Seymour Melman, George Molan, Richard Nixon, Robert E. Stripling, Val Peterson, George Portell, Bill Burrud, George Putnam, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Stalin, Douglas MacArthur, Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg, Mario Salvadori, Lewis Strauss, Paul Tibbets, Kermit Beahan, Harry S. Truman, and James E. Van Zandt.

The Atomic Cafe, referred to as a "compilation verite" with no "voice of God narration" or any recently shot footage, was released at the height of nostalgia and cynicism in America.

By 1982, Americans lost much of their faith in their government following the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal the previous decade,[9] alongside the seemingly never-ending arms race with the Soviet Union.

"Soapy" Gillam, better known as the "bomb shelter king of North Texas", while also remembering one of her friends used her family's bunker as a clubhouse/secret party spot, felt compelled to revisiting the era that formed her childhood.

[12] Barry Posen and Stephen Van Evera explain this revival in their article "Defense Policy and the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment" published in International Security.

[17][18] The Atomic Cafe was produced over a five-year period through the collaborative efforts of three directors: Jayne Loader and brothers Kevin and Pierce Rafferty.

[30][31] In 1995, Jayne Loader's Public Shelter, an educational CD-ROM and website – with clips from The Atomic Cafe, plus additional material from declassified films, audio, photographs, and text files that archive the history, technology, and culture of the Atomic Age – was released by EJL Productions, a company formed by Jayne Loader and her first husband, Eric Schwaab.

There are songs, speeches by politicians, and frightening documentary footage of guinea-pig American troops shielding themselves from an atomic blast and then exposing themselves to radiation neither they nor their officers understood.

Caught laughing incongruously before a solemn report on an atom threat, Truman comes off as callously flip ...[37]On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 93% based on reviews from 29 critics.

[38] Deirdre Boyle, an Associate Professor and Academic Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies at The New School and an author of Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, claimed that "By compiling propaganda or fictions denying 'nuclear-truth', The Atomic Cafe reveals the American public's lack of resistance to the fear generated by the government propaganda films and the misinformation they generated.

"[39] The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction said it was, in quotes, a "mockumentary" from its editing and called it, "The most powerful satire of the official treatments of the atomic age".

The press release for the Registry stated that "The influential film compilation 'Atomic Cafe' provocatively documents the post-World War II threat of nuclear war as depicted in a wide assortment of archival footage from the period ..."[5][41] Controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was inspired by the film that he tweeted: "This is the movie that told me that a documentary about a deadly serious subject could be very funny.

[47] Featured in the film but not the soundtrack were "13 Women" by Bill Haley and His Comets,[48] Glenn Miller's version of "Flying Home",[49] a couple of themes from Miklos Rozsa, Arthur Fiedler's take on Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.

2,[50] Charles Mackerras's interpretation of "The Old Castle" from Pictures at an Exhibition[51] and Floyd Tillman's original 1948 version of "This Cold War with You" that was heard during the credits.