This post discusses nuclear weapon laboratory advertising in Physics Today and Scientific American 1950-1964. I focus on Sandia National Laboratories and a series of ads published 1956-1959; these advertisements are distinctive because of their explicit engagement with ideologies justifying nuclear weapon projects. I show that these advertisements often drew on tropes of the history and violence of the “American West” to justify, represent, and recruit for nuclear weapons work. This discussion, drawing on historical examples, offers a lens for examining contemporary discourses about US nuclear weapons.