A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945

[Sunni Man]

There has been over 2,000 nuclear detonations in various locations around the world since the first one was exploded over Japan in 1945. ....



Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

The "Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Dark Sun" (the development of the hydrogen bomb) by Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Richard Rhodes, are fascinating books. The National Lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where America's nuclear weapons are manufactured, is not far from me. I know some people who work there.

Two things germane to this thread and to our current global situation:

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists infamous Doomsday Clock is now at three minutes till midnight. That indicates the most dangerous possibility of an exchange of nuclear weapons between belligerents in 34 years, and the belligerents today are a lot crazier than they were 34 years ago. Take your pick: Japan & China, Pakistan & India, North Korea & South Korea, Iran & Israel, Israel & Pakistan, Russia & America, and the list goes on.

Richard Rhodes argues in Dark Sun, and very convincingly too I might add, that the existence of the hydrogen bomb has actually saved humanity from itself for over half a century. He argues with the help of graphs and logarithms developed for the purpose, that had the bombs not existed up till this point in history, mankind's mutual attempt at extinction would have gone off the curve we've been on for at least 5000 years, by hundreds of millions of deaths. Wars since Hiroshima have been conventional affairs, not MAD affairs (Mutually Assured Destruction), where billions of people might die rather than millions.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

There has been over 2,000 nuclear detonations in various locations around the world since the first one was exploded over Japan in 1945. ....



Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing"the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

Actually, the first nuclear detonation was the Trinity test in New Mexico, then Hiroshima.