For essentially being just a map with beeps and dots, this is pretty terrifying (due in part, I think, to the artist's suspenseful use of sound and silence, which is hauntingly musical--the months being the metronome). It's difficult to conceive the full scale of the environmental impact these 2,053 explosions have made.
Every time a nuclear device is detonated, the Mayor of Hiroshima writes a letter protesting the test. The mayors have been doing this since 1968.
This is indeed extremely scary. It would be interesting to know, beyond the obvious radioactive fallout, what environmental impacts these detonations have had.
ReplyDeleteFrom mining the uranium, to waste burial, it can't be good. I've read that the explosions can cause earthquakes, so I wonder if they had much negative influence on subterranea, or the tectonic plates. Obliterated wildlife, and even the psychological harm brought to the social consciousness from the repeated testing of such overwhelming destructive power ought to be considered.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty bizarre to see from this removed perspective. We're just bombing the hell out of ourselves.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/dec/12/nuclearindustry.climatechange
ReplyDelete"Richard Turco of UCLA said detonating between 50 and 100 bombs - just 0.03% of the world's arsenal - would throw enough soot into the atmosphere to create climactic anomalies unprecedented in human history."
I wonder why nothing was mentioned of the 2,000+ that have already been detonated, and why 100 more would be that much more devastating.
Maybe the soot and black smoke comes mainly from the debris of cities, not oceans, deserts, and tundras where we have done the majority of our testing.
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