That was actually my take on the movie: the “ark” was a stand-in for nuclear weaponry, or a subconscious representation of it. The special handling, the climactic scene with the pseudo-mushroom cloud, everyone melting… and then the stockpiling by “top men” once the troublesome scientists were out of the way. Spielberg did this in some of his early movies, with plot elements being stand-ins for popular boogeymen of the day (like, Poltergeist’s graveyard was a stand-in for toxic waste dumps ala Love Canal – “You moved the graves but you didn’t move the bodies!”)
That was actually my take on the movie: the “ark” was a stand-in for nuclear weaponry, or a subconscious representation of it. The special handling, the climactic scene with the pseudo-mushroom cloud, everyone melting… and then the stockpiling by “top men” once the troublesome scientists were out of the way. Spielberg did this in some of his early movies, with plot elements being stand-ins for popular boogeymen of the day (like, Poltergeist’s graveyard was a stand-in for toxic waste dumps ala Love Canal – “You moved the graves but you didn’t move the bodies!”)