A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945

[Kolesar]

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.

http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/

http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery/a-time-lapse-map-of-every-nuclear-explosion-since-1945/#comment-17881

With one notable "missing country".

[CJvR]

1. Intresting.

Almost like a symphony!

[pscot]

2. Terrifying and depressing

[jwirr]

3. The first thing that came to mind was something my dad would say everytime there was a nuclear

accident. It was always announced that there was no danger level. He would say "I wonder how many no danger levels add up to danger?".

Here to I wonder what this has done to our environmental world? Can't be good.

[Scuba]

4. USA! We're # 1 !!! ...

I'd really like to know what they thought they would learn from the 1,000th test that they hadn't learned by the 500th.

[hunter]

5. Mostly they were trying to build a bomb with a long shelf life...

... and trying to assess the reliability of bombs that had been on the shelf too long.

There were a couple of Edward Teller mad scientist type experiments for good measure -- "star wars" lasers, neutron bombs, that sort of thing.

[Scuba]

6. They should have all been confined to mental institutions. n/t

[hunter]

8. This is true.

Now we use super-computer simulations instead of actual tests... which is just as crazy.

But the people who design and build the supercomputers don't mind. It pays the bills.

[hunter]

7. Not one missing country, but two...

Israel/South Africa.

Israel still has bombs. South Africa dismantled theirs as their apartheid government collapsed. (The thought of black people with atomic bombs was much too terrifying for the world's white ruling classes.)

There are a few more nations that could put atomic bombs together if they decided to; some of them on fairly short notice.

[friendly_iconoclast]

9. I take it you are referring to the Vela Incident?

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-vela-incident/

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB190/index.htm

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

[hunter]

10. It's all "fog of war" stuff, arm waving, and plenty of distractions.

The USA is too close to Israel and was too close to apartheid South Africa to let the light shine on any of this.

France is one of the players too. They have their own interests in Middle Eastern politics.

A similar situation exists with Pakistan and North Korea. Some factions want to amplify these nations' nuclear capabilities, other factions want to dismiss them.

To officially join the nuclear club, weapons tests have to be blatantly clear -- either open air, or seismically distinctive. You've got to be connected to plutonium production or high quality uranium enrichment. But uranium enrichment is an absurdly slow and extremely expensive way to make bombs. (And no, Iran isn't there yet...)

The USA essentially abandoned uranium bombs in 1944, but the infrastructure for building uranium bombs was already in place. That's why Hiroshima was a uranium bomb.

The one and only reason someone might build uranium bombs in the modern world is that production doesn't leak the telltale isotopes of plutonium production. Building a uranium bomb is a trivial technical challenge in comparison to a plutonium bomb, but any nation that has the technical expertise to enrich uranium also has the capacity to build a working plutonium bomb. It's even easier today than it was sixty years ago, back when engineers were using slide rules and you couldn't buy a cheap milling machines and fast electronics from China.

[harmonicon]

11. I don't think they're missing - I just don't think those countries detonated any bombs.

That's as I understand it at least.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

12. Had enough?

Time to change.

[theAntiRand]

13. How is the west coast still habitable?

I knew there'd been testing, but good lord.

[zipplewrath]

14. Underground

Much of the later stuff was underground. It contains all of the fallout and nuclear material.

[usrname]

16. It explains the troglodyte-ness

of those living in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.

[kenfrequed]

15. It staggers the imagination

I had read that some alternative history people had tried to factor in a limited nuclear exchange into their writings and were shocked to discover that their limited nuclear exchange actually resulted in fewer nuclear weapons being used.

[usrname]

17. Makes for a great bar trivia question

Which country has received the most nuclear bomb explosions?

USA! USA! USA!