An Entire City

As the bomb fell over Hiroshima and exploded, we saw an entire city disappear.

Hiroshimastrasse, Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

I wrote in my log the words: “My God, what have we done?”

Captain Robert Lewis (1955)

The World Set Free

In the map of nearly every country of the world three or four more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, mark the position of the dying atomic bombs…

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

…and the death areas that men have been forced to abandon around them.

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

Within these areas perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of masterpieces…

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

…and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose charred remains lie buried…

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

…a legacy of curious material that only future generations may hope to examine.

Mike Nelson's Coral Reef, Tate Britain, Pimlico, Westminster, SW1P

From HG Wells’ The World Set Free (1914)

Riders of the Apocalypse

Kurtz: We must kill them. We must incinerate them.

Brian Barnes' Riders of the Apocalypse, Sandford Street, Cold Blow Lane, New Cross, Lewisham, SE14

Pig after pig… cow after cow… village after village… army after army…

From John Milius’ screenplay for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)