Nuclear testing time lapse map

[rashore]

A friend shared this and I thought it was interesting to share...

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA[/media]

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.

[George Ford]

Why is the whole world not completely radioactive?

[+and-then]

They stopped testing them above ground in 1963 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_Nuclear_Test_Ban_Treaty

[Likely Guy]

Wow... you're right, it is beautiful in a strange(love) way. I also think that the size of the flash also represented the yield.

For those interested, the largest man-made explosion; behold "Tsar Bomba". The bomb was 26 feet long and almost 7 feet across and weighed 30 tons. It was dropped in October 1961 from 6 and a half miles. The blast yield was between 50 to 58 megatons of TNT (ie. "1,350–1,570 times the combined power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 10 times the combined power of all the conventional explosives used in World War II."

The original design could have called for 100 megatons, but they scaled it back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Thanks Rashore for sharing that. The only time I marched was in 1987 and that was against nuclear testing. Years later the wall fell, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Okay, I made up the last part.

Edited November 21, 2013 by Likely Guy

[Frank Merton]

I noticed that a few British tests were done on US soil. Interesting.

[Likely Guy]

I noticed that a few British tests were done on US soil. Interesting.

Yes that was interesting, and after the initial 'excitement' the British scaled it back (while the French went crazy).

Another interesting time line would be an interactive display of the world's newspaper headlines.