#atomic bomb

[weepingwidar]

Chesley Bonestell (American, 1888-1986) - Atomic Bombing of New York (1948)

[copperbadge]

The creation of the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear reaction was a solemn moment for many reasons; a huge scientific leap, but also an advancement with the potential, eventually realized, for massive destructive devastation.

But there is a little comedy in the fact that the American nuclear bomb program was jumpstarted and heavily funded in part because Fermi and his colleagues looked around at each other in a squash court under a football stadium in Chicago and said, "We have to beat the Nazis to the bomb, and we better hustle. They must be way out ahead of us, because we managed to do this and we're a bunch of dipshits."

Like, I'm not calling Enrico Fermi and his colleagues dipshits, clearly they were brilliant and talented scientists. But the general sentiment from Fermi was that if he could do it with what he had at his disposal, the Nazis must already have done it (they Had Not).

So much of human progress, for good or ill, is humans taking a good long look inward and saying, "I achieved this and I know me. Imagine what someone who had their shit together could do."

[retroscifiart]

Art by David B. Mattingly for “The World Next Door" by Brad Ferguson (1990)

[stationedatyourheart]

August 1945, "Prompt and utter destruction"

some unfiltered versions below the cut here because i love playing with hues and filters

(top left og)

[stone-cold-groove]

Cold war era Civil Defense public awareness/propaganda poster - 1951.

[jareckiworld]

Tan Mu — Bikini Atoll (oil on linen, 2020)

[divinum-pacis]

Japanese Catholics kneel in prayer for atomic bombing victims in 1949. (RNS archive photo. Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society.)

[kropotkindersurprise]

Nelson Mandela speaks about the USA's abhorrent war crime when they dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese civillians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murdering more than a 100.000 people. [video]