There have been 2,049 registered nuclear weapon explosions on the Earth. There are also 116 PNE's ( Peaceful Nuclear Explosions ) by the Russians and 26 by the U.S. These PNE's were for a number of reasons, from snuffing out underground oil fires to excavating. The detonation of the 2 atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki while having a very large death toll, do not come anywhere near the environmental damage that the other explosions caused.
Chernoble, 1 facility... leaked radioactive fallout that was measured on every continent. I could not even imagine what the real spread of radiation from all that testing would be.
I do admit to seeing beauty in the shapes created by the explosions... the smoke and plasma allow you to see the physics behind the motion. It really is incredible to watch... mesmerizing, beautiful. Unfortunately, each one is a radioactive nightmare that has technically created some post apocalyptic conditions on the planet. Polluting the air, the water and the soil. We carry the legacy of all this testing in our genetics now.
Cancer rates are incredibly high all over the world. Not just in older people but in children who have not had time to be exposed to long term effects of anything. Parents are passing genetic problems to their children... War vets from the Iraq wars have come home to get sick and have deformed and sick children. Most likely this has something to do with the depleted uranium that they coat shells with to make them able to pierce heavy armor. Whenever the shells are fired it turns into a fine dust. Every soldier and citizen on the ground there is being exposed it. Cancer rates and birth defects increased dramatically in Iraq after the first Gulf War.
At the very least, we may not have dropped those atomic bombs on cities, killing, burning and poisoning people, destroying infrastructure... and the tests were also spaced out over time, but it doesn't change the nature of what each one was.
I also do not think that it is unrelated that we have a massive whole in our ozone and that we set off nuclear explosions in our upper atmosphere. There is no scientific doubt that CFC's are eating away at the ozone layer, but I believe that we may have initially caused the hole through upper atmosphere atomic testing.
Warning about this next one... turn down off the sound completely unless you want to hear extremely heavy metal music. It is worth watching as it has incredible footage of explosions and the impact of seeing so many explosions back to back does drive home the scale of things.
Everyone in the world in power during this period of time must have been completely insane. This isn't meant to be doom and gloom, just stating the nature of our situation. This is why you cannot just blindly trust world leaders to do what is right. Scientists warned them about radioactive fallout and they did it anyways. People need to force their leaders to do what is in the best interest of the people and the planet.
Here is a comparison of yield for a few of the explosions. Hiroshima is a mere 15 and Nagasaki is 21 kt. The Russian Tzar Bomba is 50,000 kt. Insane.
