More with the morbid fascination

[digitaldiscipline]

http://www.abomb1.org/testpix/index.html

I haven't watched the show "Jericho," but they're getting a lot of mileage out of the image of the mushroom cloud in the background from their season premier. It's a compelling visual, and one of those things I'd call "primal" if it wasn't less than sixty years old.

Fun fact: The mushroom cloud shape is due to the super-heated center of the explosion rising rapidly due to plain old "warm air rises" physics rather than anything more exotic (usually at between 150-250mph).

But, man.... some of these are just beautiful photographs, despite the content.

Comments

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, doesn't the smoke from any ordinary explosion rise and form into a cloud in the same way (except not on as large a scale)?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

It does.

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

Beauty is not confined to the benign alone. There is much terrible beauty in nature as well. I just don't happen to think that we ought to be "testing" fucking nuclear weapons at all... we *know* how the hell they work, why test them? And, in this case, I could do without having seen the "beauty" of these pics if it meant one less stoopid act on the part of humanity.

[razerwolfe.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that atomic mushroom clouds were beautiful and majestic. Made a 6' plaster one in college art class. The other students kept asking me what I was making and why. They never understood it's power and beauty, they would only make one for a protest so to them it couldn't be Art.