Visual data: 2053 nuclear blasts

Isao Hashimoto, a Japanese foreign exchange dealer turned multimedia artist, has produced this bird's eye history of the nuclear era in the form of an animated timeline map showing the 2053 nuclear explosions set off by seven nations between 1945 and 1998. Each second represents one month. Hashimoto used no letters in the film, so speakers of any language can follow it. In the last two minutes of the video, each nation's explosions are highlighted in turn, by location. Hashimoto drew on data assembled by Nils Olaf Bergkvist and Ragnhild Ferm, and co-published by the Swedish Defence Research Establishment and te Stockholm International...