SINCE MARCH 30, 1979, THREE MILE ISLAND HAS REFERRED TO FAR MORE THAN a small island in the Susquehanna River. Few Americans, at least, have any difficulty calling up an image of Mile Island's cooling towers in the bucolic middle landscape of central Pennsylvania, now the icons of a dramatic encounter with the machine in the garden. Indeed, the abstracted forms of those particular towers are nearly as recognizable as the first icon of the nuclear age, the mushroom cloud. Six years after a plant malfunction which caused the recommended evacuation of pregnant women and children and the voluntary evacuation of thousands of other area residents, tourists from all over the world visit the site, doubtless a striking contrast to their visit, perhaps a day before, to the Amish of Lancaster County. Remember Harrisburg, like the euphonious Remember Hiroshima, is a rallying cry for the antinuclear movement both in the United States and abroad, and expunging the symbol from the usually short historical memory of the American people or, barring that, restructuring its meanings is the daily concern of a small army of public relations specialists. 1 The fundamental meanings of Mile as a widely shared symbol were constructed rapidly, under stress, and although they have undergone refinement, have changed little. An exploration of the social processes which transformed Three Mile Island from a place name to a prototype of contemporary American experience both clarifies the meanings of this particular symbol and reveals some of the influences of mass media on individual and group strategies for interpreting experience and determining appropriate situational behavior.2 To study Mile from a cultural perspective is