The Armageddon Experience recounts my experience as a science student working at a little-known, top-secret Navy laboratory in the San Francisco, preparing for nuclear weapon tests in the Pacific. It tells of my journey from the 1950s University of California, Berkeley, to the Pacific Proving Grounds—from campus life to secret national defense research and interactions with Manhattan Project scientists. The possibility of a dangerous political decision or an accident during the Cold War created a climate of existential fear that loomed over all those involved. I describe how I came to stand on the beach of a far-away Pacific island, barely outside the safe zone, to experience a multi-megaton nuclear Armageddon unfolding second-by-second before me. What my colleagues and I experienced affected our lives and threatened the future existence of our nation. Both curious and cautious at the time, I projected the physical and radiation damage I had come to understand from such a detonation onto the San Francisco Bay Area and describe the escape route I would take if a situation like the Cuban Missile Crisis were to continue to heat up. While military and terrorist threats abound in the early 21st century, the true Armageddon experience faced by the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is no longer discussed. Those of us who have witnessed the detonation of a multi-megaton nuclear weapon are an aging population and few (if any) are now involved in American defense policy and strategic planning.