I first saw this when it was released into the InterWebz by Japanese artist, Isao Hashimoto and I loved it then – and I think it’s as worthy of another look today as it was then – and it will continue to be, for many years to come.
Imagine all of the people born during these nuclear tests and the spike in cancer cases world-wide, among the people who’ve lived through these abominable experiments, without their knowledge.
Hashimoto created a beautiful and 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 – when the buildup becomes overwhelming.
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