nucleomitophobia

English

Etymology

Coined by psychiatrist Milton Arnold Dushkin in the early 1960s, from nucleo- (“atomic nucleus”) + mito- (“mitosis”) +‎ -phobia (“fear of”), in reference to a supposed resemblance of atomic fission to cellular division.

Noun

nucleomitophobia (uncountable)

1. Fear of nuclear radiation, now especially atomic bombs.
   • 1961 September 29, “The People: Ready to Act”, in Time:

     Nikita Krushchev's war of nerves was plainly having an effect on the U.S. citizenry... There were the usual neurotics. In Chicago, public officials received a spate of calls from women complaining that their hair curlers were radioactive, from men suspicious of the olives in their martinis. (Chicago Psychiatrist Milton A. Dushkin named the ailment "nucleomitophobia"—fear of the atom).

   • 1961 November 19, Cedar Rapids Gazette, page 122:

     A physician says the Nuclear Age has spawned a new phobia—nucleomitophobia, or fear of the atom. An article in Today's Health, a magazine published by the American Medical Assn., said public officials have received a rash of calls from persons who believe they are radioactive.

   • 1963 January, Michael Freeberne, translating an article in the 1 March 1962 Hongqi (《红旗》) in "Chinese Vignettes", Problems of Communism, Vol. XII, No. 1, p. 15:

     When they are frantically expanding armament and making preparations for war, and they need to create war hysteria, they encourage man-made nucleomitophobia to spread rampantly, letting people know how radioactivity is already "threatening normal life in the United States." But when they want to sell their milk, they have to try "to find ways and means to set people's minds at ease regarding the question of radioactivity." Under the capitalist system, which is characterized by irresoluble contradictions, such jokes cannot be avoided.

   • 1988, Brian Stableford, "American Book of the Dead", Fiction & Fantasy Book Review Annual:

     Bertie Rupp, who wanted to become a farmer in his youth, is entrapped by city life and achieves brief celebrity as the man who aestheticized continuous computer stationery. Disenchantment and nucleomitophobia (an exaggerated fear of atomic Armageddon) cause him to drop out.

   • 1999, Arthur Herzog III, The War–Peace Establishment‎^[1], page vii:

     I SUFFER, I HASTEN TO SAY, FROM NUCLEOMITOPHOBIA, THE FEAR of atomic attack, and my quest for a cure has led me to grapple with the great debate on war and peace as it is being carried on in the United States.

   • 2008, Ronald M. Doctor & al., The Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears, and Anxieties, 3rd ed., s.v. "nuclear war and nuclear weapons":

     Fear of nuclear weapons is known as nucleomitophobia. The same term applies to fear of atomic energy... The fear is based on a feeling by individuals that they have no control over the fate of the world and that nuclear weapons can kill off all of human life and civilization. This fear is also related to a fear of death and a fear of apocalypse, or the end of the world.