Mushroom Cloud gallery

**Skeptical** · Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:10 am Post subject: Mushroom Cloud gallery

For those of us who grew up during the Cold War, the image of an atomic mushroom cloud was pretty much burned into our consciousness from an early age. When I showed the image to my own children, thankfully, they didn't even know what it was. As absolutely dreadful as they are, there is something luridly fascinating about those explosions. Apparently someone else thinks so too because they built a online gallery of photos of atomic bomb explosions. No, it's not the place to go for light-hearted fun. But if you ever need a reminder of how well equipped we are for obliterating ourselves, it's worth a visit.

http://www.zvis.com/nuclear/nukimgs.shtml

One particular image that I still find astonishing is one of the very first blast at Alamogordo. I cannot imagine the physics required to create this.

S
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"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -- Thomas Jefferson

AVoid · Joined: 31 Mar 2008 Posts: 6

If you're hankering for even more visions of the apocalypse, I would recommend the film "Trinity and Beyond." It's got footage of many, many of the tests featured in the gallery of that website. I think its even narrated by my man William Shatner. You'd think watching footage of explosion after explosion would get disturbing and depressing after a while, but they are all so horrifically beautiful, its really hard not to look. Maybe growing up during the cold war with these images - knowing that this kind of destructive power existed, but there really wasn't anything we could do about it - has conditioned us somewhat. Happily, I don't think my 10 year old even knows of the existence of these weapons. Since we don't have cable TV, her exposure to most of the evils of this world has been thankfully limited, although some of those Disney movies can be quite scary.