February 16, 2011

I came across this today and thought you might want to watch it. It's a time-lapse video documenting the 2,053 nuclear tests that took place between 1945 and 1998.

The first explosion marks the Manhattan Project's 'Trinity' test near Los Alamos, New Mexico. The last one features Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of '98. The video was created by a Japanese artist named Isao Hashimoto.

By the way, he left out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests because the legitimacy of both remain fuzzy.

A few things to keep in mind as you watch the video:

• Each nation that detonated an explosion gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map.


• A running tally is kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen.


• You can note the years in the bottom right corner.


• It starts out slow. But, if you fast-forward to 1962, it gets real, real fast.