The House in the Middle is the title of two American documentary film shorts (13 minutes), respectively from 1953 and 1954, which showed the effects of a nuclear bomb test on a set of three small houses.

The black-and-white 1953 film was created by the Federal Civil Defense Administration to attempt to show that a clean, freshly painted house (the middle house) is more likely to survive a nuclear attack than its poorly maintained counterparts (the right and left houses).

A color version was released the next year by the American Coatings Association,^[1][2][3][4] a "bureau" invented by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association trade group (now known as the American Coatings Association).^[5][6]

Footage for the film was recorded during the Upshot-Knothole Encore test at the Nevada Test Site on May 8, 1953.^[7]

In 2001, the Library of Congress deemed the 1954 film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.^[8][9]

It was featured on Rick Prelinger's 2004 collage film Panorama Ephemera.^[10]

• Fallout Protection
• The Bomb
• Duck and Cover
• The Atomic Cafe