For most people, the term ‘mushroom cloud’ will probably bring to mind not only a particular kind of image (a cloud rising up from the ground rather than just floating in the skies above) but also a particular kind of event, namely the explosion of a nuclear bomb. This in turn is likely to be associated in people’s minds with large-scale, visible material destruction and the invisible threat of biologically harmful radiation (also perhaps the technologically disruptive impact of an electromagnetic pulse) as well as excessive, almost unimaginable amounts of human suffering.[2]

But at the same time there is quite possibly (and I am speaking from my own experience here) a sense of awe in the face of this strangely beautiful display of power, a power which seems to go beyond what we would normally regard as human. There is something more elemental or outright superhuman about it.

This is perhaps best exemplified by two statements J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘father of the atomic bomb’, made about the first ever detonation of a nuclear device (this test carrying the resonant code name ‘Trinity’),[3] one referencing ‘the radiance of a thousand suns’, the other declaring: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’[4] These are quotations from chapter 11 of the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient sacred text of Hinduism.

Through these quotations, Oppenheimer seemed to liken the nuclear explosion creating the mushroom cloud to the forces of nature that light up the sun, and to the work of an all-powerful, divine being.[5] This would appear to imply that through the atomic bomb Oppenheimer and other scientists were able to elevate themselves to the status of a force of nature or divinity, whereby their elevated status depended precisely on the immense scale of destruction they had caused, with mass death, both instantaneous and torturously delayed, following through the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To put this another way: the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud evokes both the heights of human (scientific and technological) achievement and the depths of human (war-time) suffering.

The first nuclear detonation was carried out in the desert of New Mexico on 16 July 1945. The only well-exposed colour photograph of the first nuclear mushroom cloud was taken by the American physicist Jack W. Aeby, who was working for the Manhattan Project, that is the vast research and development program undertaken during World War II to create an atomic bomb.[6] Together with a wide range of black and white pictures as well as black and white and colour films of the Trinity test explosion, Aeby’s photograph has been widely circulated across the decades. However, due to the absolute secrecy of the Manhattan Project, these images were not initially made public. The first published images of nuclear mushroom clouds concerned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945.

In 2025, we will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the momentous events they captured, and of the ever-proliferating mushroom cloud imagery so closely associated with them. This will be a good moment to reflect on this imagery and its history, such reflection being of particular importance, even urgency, at a time when, according to an expert panel set up by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in recent years humanity has been dangerously close to nuclear war.

In January 2023 and again in January 2024 the panel set the ‘Doomsday Clock’, which had been introduced by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 (with a 11.53pm setting), at 90 seconds to midnight, closer to doom than ever before.[7] While also taking into account other global threats (like climate change and artificial intelligence), the panel focused on the war between Russia, a nuclear power, and Ukraine as the most worrying development.[8] And on 28 January 2025 it decided to send a signal by moving the clock even closer to midnight, albeit only by a second, and yet that second is meant to count: ‘Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.’[9]

With most nuclear powers (Russia, United States, China, India, Pakistan and Israel) currently involved in, or always on the verge of, military conflicts, with comprehensive external and internal threats to many democracies and an erratic president in the White House, the outlook for 2025 is not good. Furthermore, it has been highly significant that the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese ‘grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, … for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.’[10]

In this introduction I briefly examine the origins and meanings of the term ‘mushroom cloud’ and also some of the psychological, cultural, political, mythological and religious resonances of the image, the label and the events giving rise to this image and this label. I will also survey some of the materials, including both scholarly publications[11] and a wide range of primary (audio)visual and text sources, available (many of them online) for studying the imagery of nuclear explosions.

I should perhaps add that I have been concerned about, perhaps even obsessed with, the prospect of nuclear war and the image of the mushroom cloud ever since my childhood in the 1960s and 1970s, growing up in the Federal Republic of Germany less than 100 miles from the Cold War border between East and West.

Let’s start with basic definitions. As it turns out the term ‘mushroom cloud’ has a long and somewhat surprising history and range of referents. This is perhaps best captured by dictionaries and the Wikipedia entry for the term.

Definitions

The Merriam-Webster dictionary entry for ‘mushroom cloud’ is straightforward: ‘a mushroom-shaped cloud’; but it adds: ‘specifically: one caused by the explosion of a nuclear weapon’.[12] So the main referent is the cloud produced by a nuclear explosion, but it is not the only one. The sample sentences reveal that the term can also refer to clouds resulting from other kinds of explosions, and under ‘Word History’ the ‘first known use’ is dated ‘circa 1909, in the meaning defined above’.[13]

The Oxford English Dictionary lists a sample quotation from 1902 (concerning a mushroom cloud arising from a volcano crater) and provides the following definition: ‘An ascending cloud of smoke and debris characteristically taking the shape of a tall column spreading out into a broad flattish top; esp. such a cloud resulting from a nuclear explosion. Also figurative.’[14]

For a fuller account of what exactly a mushroom cloud consists of and what kinds of events may give rise to such a cloud, one can turn to Wikipedia: ‘A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke, and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently energetic detonation or deflagration will produce the same effect. They can be caused by powerful conventional weapons, like thermobaric weapons such as the ATBIP [Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power] and GBU-43/B MOAB [Massive Ordnance Air Blast]. Some volcanic eruptions and impact events can produce natural mushroom clouds.’[15] The entry traces illustrations of mushroom clouds, and the reference to mushrooms in descriptions of certain clouds, back to the 18th century.

Importantly, the closely related Wikipedia entry on ‘nuclear explosion’ highlights the nuclear winter hypothesis: ‘In a 1983 article, Carl Sagan claimed that a small-scale nuclear war could release enough particles into the atmosphere to cause the planet to cool and cause crops, animals, and agriculture to disappear across the globe – an effect named nuclear winter.’[16] Research across the decades has indeed suggested that even a limited nuclear war could thus produce a truly global catastrophe (ironically the inverse of the currently unfolding and ever escalating global warming catastrophe), with many plant and animal species going extinct and potentially billions of humans dying.[17]

It is not at all reassuring when the Wikipedia entry for ‘nuclear winter’ points out that while ‘[n]uclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war’,[18] the term is actually ‘something of a misnomer’ because ‘nuclear devices need not be detonated to ignite a firestorm’; it is thought that ‘the same “nuclear winter” effect would occur if 100 large scale conventional firestorms were ignited’ (emphasis added).[19] It is worth noting that volcanic eruptions also can be, and indeed have been, the source of a global drop in temperature and associated crop failures as in the infamous Year Without a Summer, 1816.[20]

Thus, in the same way that a mushroom cloud can result from a volcanic eruption or a non-nuclear bomb explosion, so catastrophic cooling of our planet can result from volcanic eruptions or non-nuclear fires. And yet both mushroom clouds and rapid global cooling are most likely to arise as a consequence of nuclear war.

All of this highlights how central images of mushroom clouds and our awareness of the devastating power of nuclear (but also certain non-nuclear) explosions giving rise to them have become to our understanding of, and our concerns about, humanity’s present and future. It is worth examining this a bit more closely.

Resonances

The first three nuclear explosions in 1945 and the images of mushroom clouds they are so closely associated with have resonated widely across post-war culture. There was the early recognition by scientists, politicians and others that the unprecedented power of nuclear weapons might enable humanity to destroy itself, or at least to destroy the modern foundations of human civilisation. In fact, this recognition preceded the building of the bomb, not least in Science Fiction (H.G. Wells’ 1914 novel The World Set Free is frequently mentioned in this context).[21]

Also, in the run-up to the Trinity test there was some concern that the first explosion of a nuclear device might set in motion an unstoppable chain reaction which would ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth, something brought back to public attention by Christopher Nolan’s 2023 movie Oppenheimer.[22]

So the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud is connected to all kinds of fears to do with the destruction of human civilisation, perhaps the extinction of the human species or even of all life on this planet. In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, doomsday scenarios have spread widely and become terrifyingly realistic (with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock keeping track of how close to the end we are).

Closely connected to this is a general concern about all forms of environmental destruction. The explosion of a nuclear bomb does a huge amount of environmental damage: built structures and natural landscapes can be  devastated, and countless organisms killed, initially through heat and a shockwave; in addition ionising radiation and radioactive debris carried away by winds can do both immediate and long-term damage to all forms of life, among other things leading to genetic mutations which can affect organisms for many generations to come. And, as already mentioned, firestorms resulting from nuclear explosions could bring about a catastrophic cooling of the atmosphere and with it the extinction of many species.

It is not surprising, then, that there have been strong connections between debates about the impact of nuclear weapons and the environmental movement.[23] This is perhaps best exemplified by the 1962 book that is often said to have launched the modern incarnation of this movement, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; here Carson likens the danger and impact of pesticides and insecticides to that of nuclear fallout and radioactivity.[24]

In addition to spreading a new kind of doomsday culture (which does of course have deep historical roots in mythology and religion) and facilitating the rise of modern environmentalism, the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud has also developed what we could call ‘cosmic’ resonances. Many contributions to public debates about so-called Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), which – building on much older discussions – took off in the US and elsewhere from 1947 onwards, have suggested a particular explanatory framework; according to this, extra-terrestrials had been alerted by nuclear explosions to the new power acquired by humanity, and they began to intervene in human affairs because humanity now potentially constituted a threat to extra-terrestrial civilisations or, more directly and benevolently, because it definitely posed a threat to its own existence.

Within this framework, alien intervention could be seen as an effort to save humanity from itself or to protect the rest of the universe from humans. There is an extremely diverse literature on all this, ranging from sensationalistic accounts and outright Science Fiction to meticulously researched studies of UFO subcultures and also of the actual UFO phenomenon (whatever it may really be) itself.[25]

People who reject the idea that unidentified flying objects could have anything to do with extra-terrestrials have to confront what is commonly known as the Fermi Paradox, namely ‘the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extra-terrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence’; reportedly, during a lunchtime conversation with fellow nuclear scientists in the summer of 1950, Enrico Fermi, referring back to an earlier discussion of space travel and life in the universe,  suddenly blurted out: ‘Where is everybody?’[26]

The modern search for extra-terrestrial intelligent life (initially through radio astronomy), also known as SETI, was launched in 1960, and more than 60 years later there is still nothing that is widely accepted as ‘conclusive evidence’ for the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. Across the decades, one response to this absence and thus to the Fermi paradox has been the idea that extra-terrestrial civilisations tend to destroy themselves in nuclear wars (or other technological catastrophes). They do not exist long enough for humans to make contact with them or even just to find traces of their existence. The mushroom cloud thus casts a shadow across the whole universe, suggesting comprehensive death and destruction wherever intelligent life arises.[27]

Intriguingly, astronomers and science journalists have appropriated the idea of a ‘mushroom cloud’ to describe gigantic gas formations surrounding black holes: ‘Our investigation shows how these gas bubbles accelerated by the black hole are expanding and transforming in time. Indeed, they create spectacular mushroom-shaped structures, rings and filaments that are similar to those originating from a powerful volcanic eruption on planet Earth,’ stated Marisa Brienza of the University of Bologna.[28] The news report about this discovery on the Sky & Telescope website bluntly declared (once again with reference to volcanic eruptions rather than nuclear explosions): ‘Astronomers have discovered a mushroom cloud in space.’[29] The scale of this phenomenon is truly humbling; no matter how devastating volcanic eruptions and human-made nuclear explosions on Earth are, they pale into insignificance when compared to these gas formations which stretch across hundreds of thousands of light years and evolve across a hundred million years and more. And yet it is presumably precisely the earthly power of volcanoes and nuclear bombs which inspired astronomers and science journalists to appropriate the term ‘mushroom cloud’ to describe this (inter)galactic phenomenon.

In light of all this, it is not at all surprising that both (the debate about) the image of the mushroom cloud and the discourse about nuclear weapons have become infused with mythological and religious references. The cloud visually appears like a human-made phenomenon reaching up into the heavens, creating the most awesome illumination, heat, thunder and storm; in this – and in being derived from the release of the energy contained in matter – it might well be understood as a challenge to (the) God(s). The cloud represents a display of Earth-shaking power which one would have thought to be reserved for (the) God(s) (or cosmic objects like asteroids and the Sun).

The scientists and engineers creating the bomb have been likened to Prometheus, bringing (a new kind of) fire to humanity. The language used by Oppenheimer and other people involved in the creation of nuclear weapons – ‘Trinity’, ‘the radiance of a thousand suns’, ‘Now I am become Death’, ‘the physicists have known sin’ (the less refined variant of this being: ‘now we are all sons of bitches’) – repeatedly invokes ideas about the power of higher beings, the order of the universe and humanity’s place within it.

At the same time, images and phrases relating to nuclear weapons and explosions have entered popular culture and everyday language in such diverse ways and to such an extent that destructive nuclear power has become normalised, trivialised, rendered apparently harmless, even beautiful and in certain contexts downright sexy. This has made it so much easier for all of us to ignore, or simply forget about, all the suffering caused not only in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also, for example, by uranium mining, the displacement of people from nuclear testing sites and the (intentional as well as unintentional) radiation exposure of people finding themselves close to nuclear test explosions.[30]

One might go as far as saying that the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud is one of the most widely and deeply resonant of all twentieth century icons – and also utterly banal. It would seem, then, that an investigation of this image is a very promising endeavour indeed.

Projects

The launch pad for this investigation will be a two-day public event at the University of Portsmouth starting on the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test on 16 July 2025: ‘The Mushroom Cloud as Historical Icon: Revisioning Nuclear Histories 80 Years On’. Building on a previous event (and its associated website: https://www.the-whole-earth.com/) at the University of Portsmouth marking the 50th anniversary of NASA’s ‘Blue Marble’ photograph of the whole Earth in December 2022, the two days on the mushroom cloud are likely to include screenings of documentaries and fiction films, lectures and panel discussions, exhibitions of art work and installations.

This two-day event will be followed by the inclusion of mushroom cloud-related materials on the Whole Earth website and further events, as well as publications, about well-known pictures related to post-war science and technology under the general heading ‘The Whole Earth: From the Mushroom Cloud to the Blue Marble – Iconic Images of Science and Technology in Post-War Culture’.

The investigation of the nuclear mushroom cloud at the July event is intended to be both historical and topical, tightly focused and wide-rangingly interdisciplinary, involving scholars from across the arts & humanities, the social and natural sciences as well as designers, artists, curators and activists.

Approaches

When I started thinking about the July event and my own possible contributions to it, it occurred to me that extra care should be taken to deal with the experiences, and perspectives, of the victims of nuclear explosions, first and foremost (but by no means exclusively) in Japan.[31] And as there is a tendency to conceive of everything to do with nuclear weapons as an almost exclusively male affair, perhaps a special effort could be made to deal with the role, in the run-up to the development of nuclear weapons, of female scientists such as Marie Curie and Lise Meitner,[32] and also, for example, with the many different parts women played, as scientists and engineers but also as human computers, secretaries, wives etc., in the Manhattan Project.[33]

Based on my previous work on Stanley Kubrick’s comic nuclear Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and on Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer (2023),[34] I also think that , it is worth exploring the topic’s specifically Jewish dimensions. Given the very strong presence of Jewish scientists (who were initially particularly motivated by the possibility that Nazi Germany might create an atomic bomb) in the development of nuclear weapons and subsequently of nuclear strategy, it could be very useful to explore the diverse and changing meanings of the word ‘holocaust’. In mainstream (English language) discourse the word came to be closely, and mainly, associated with nuclear war during the first three decades after the Second World War.[35]

Today’s range of meanings, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, covers the following: 

1 ‘a sacrifice … consumed by fire’;

2 ‘a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire’, e.g. ‘a nuclear holocaust’;

3 ‘usually the Holocaust: the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II’ (emphasis in the original), or, more generally, ‘a mass slaughter of people’.

The first two definitions put the emphasis explicitly on fire. The fire in crematoria as well as the smoke coming out of their chimneys is not far from people’s minds when thinking about ‘the Holocaust’, and the nuclear mushroom cloud is, so to speak, the smoke arising from a cosmic fire briefly lit on Earth.[36] How appropriate that this cloud was, and to some extent still is, so closely associated with the word ‘holocaust’, the etymological origin of which is usually given as the Greek word for ‘burnt whole’.[37] The mushroom cloud stands for total incineration at a particular location, and the threat of incineration of the totality of life on this planet.

Once again I am struck by the fact that the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud is central to our thinking about many of the horrors as well as the scientific and technological achievements of the twentieth century. Following on from this observation, I have compiled a few specific, initial questions that I think it might be worth considering.

To begin with, I am wondering: exactly which photographs and films (but also perhaps drawings) of nuclear explosions, concerning the light and cloud they produced, were first made public? When, where, by whom and why were they published? What were people’s responses to these (moving) images? How did the phrase ‘mushroom cloud’ come to be attached to them (and which other phrases were used to describe nuclear explosions and their impact)?

A second set of questions I am very interested in  relates to visualisations of other aspects of nuclear weaponry: Which (moving) images about the making and deployment of nuclear bombs (to do with everything from uranium mines, nuclear reactors, Los Alamos and key scientific, military and political personnel to the trucks, ships, airplanes and people transporting bombs, the bombs themselves and the devastation and human suffering caused by their explosions) were first published? When, where, by whom and why were they published? What were people’s responses to these (moving) images?

A third set refers to appropriations of the image of the mushroom cloud: When, where, by whom and why was the image of the mushroom cloud first used outside the context of documenting, or reporting on, actual nuclear explosions? Which meanings did this image bring to the new contexts in which it was used (e.g. political cartoons, advertising, fictional films etc.)? And how did these uses in turn inflect the meaning of the image of the mushroom cloud?

While the above questions relate to the initial period of creating and circulating (moving) images of mushroom clouds in particular, and visualisations of all aspects of the making and deployment and effects of atomic weaponry in general, it will of course also be important to trace how all this – the imagery itself as well as its uses and meanings – changed over time, in particular as restrictions on media reports were gradually lifted, more and more countries developed and tested their own nuclear weapons, and both political activists and artists increasingly engaged with atomic imagery.

As an engagement with both the scholarly literature and primary sources will be necessary to carry out any such investigation,.  I have made a first attempt at collating a wide range of sources.

Pictures, Films and Quotations

A first batch of pictures can be accessed through an ‘Images’ search for ‘mushroom cloud photograph’ on Google.[38] One can also find pictures of specific events, such as the Trinity test.[39] Google ‘Images’ searches for ‘mushroom cloud pictures’, ‘mushroom cloud art’, ‘mushroom cloud cartoons’ and ‘mushroom cloud political cartoons’ bring up an extraordinary range of further visual representations.[40] By clicking on individual images it is possible to move on to texts that are attached to these pictures and often contextualise or analyse them.

Similarly, Google searches for ‘images of mushroom clouds in museums’ or ‘mushroom cloud art’ bring up many results which do not only display individual pictures but also often discuss them in some detail. In addition, there are specialised websites combining a wealth of visual material with explanatory texts and facsimiles of historical documents.[41]

Related Google searches can be carried out through the ‘Videos’ option or on YouTube. In this way, one can, for example, find films of the Trinity test[42] or animated mushroom cloud films (often of a political nature).[43] Together with general Google searches for ‘movies featuring mushroom clouds’, ‘nuclear explosions in movies’ and such like, searches on YouTube or through the Google ‘Videos’ option make it possible to compile relevant filmographies and watch scenes of nuclear explosions (in many cases using documentary footage) in fiction films.[44]

Many of the searches suggested above reveal that the term ‘mushroom cloud’ is used in several different contexts and does not always refer to nuclear explosions. Specific searches for uses of the term in writing can be carried out via Google with, for example, ‘mushroom cloud quotations’, or with the search term ‘mushroom cloud’ on massive press databases like Nexis.

When it comes to analysing all this material, a good starting point would be the existing scholarly literature about the nuclear mushroom cloud.

Scholarly Publications

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, it is worth highlighting first of all that there is indeed an extraordinarily wide-ranging literature about nuclear science, nuclear weapons and nuclear strategy, and also about the psychology, cultural history, sociology and politics of all things nuclear (including nuclear power stations). Before looking more specifically at publications about the nuclear mushroom cloud, I want to list a few fairly recent books (here presented in reverse chronological order) about nuclear matters in general which I have encountered (and mostly read) in the last few years:

- James Johnson, AI and the Bomb: Nuclear Strategy and Risk in the Digital Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023,

- Scott D. Sagan and Vipin Narang (eds), The Fragile Balance of Terror: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023,

- Max Hastings, Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, London: William Collins, 2022,

- Mark Wolverton, Nuclear Weapons, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022

- Haq Kamar (ed.), Nuclear Anxiety, New York: Greenhaven Publishing, 2021,

- Serhii Plokhy, Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, London: Penguin, 2021,

- Martin Sixsmith, with Daniel Sixsmith, The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind, London: Profile, 2021,

- Fred Kaplan, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020,

- William J. Perry and Tom Z. Collina, The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump, Dallas: BenBella, 2020,

- Martin J. Sherwin, Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, New York: Random House, 2020, 

- Vince Houghton, The Nuclear Spies: America's Atomic Intelligence Operation Against Hitler and Stalin, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019,

- Marc Ambinder, The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018,

- Taylor Downing, 1983: The World at the Brink, London: Little, Brown, 2018,

- Fred Pearce, Fallout: Disasters, Lies, and the Legacy of the Nuclear Age, Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.

- Rodric Braithwaite, Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation, London: Profile, 2017,

- Helen Caldicott (ed.), Sleepwalking to Armageddon: The Threat of Nuclear Annihilation, New York: The New Press, 2017, and

- Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.[45]

It is perhaps worth mentioning that I have been reading extensively about nuclear weapons ever since my teenage years in the 1970s (the first non-fiction book on this topic I read was the German translation of former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s 1968 volume The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office). After going through dozens of books on nuclear matters, especially about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the much less well-known crisis of 1983, it has been hard for me not to conclude that nuclear exchanges have only been avoided due to incredible luck. Political tensions, technical malfunctioning and misunderstandings have on more than one occasion made the use of nuclear weapons seemingly inevitable, except for coincidental circumstances (such as Stanislas Petrov being the duty officer at the command centre of the Soviet nuclear early-warning system on 26 September 1983) which, against all odds, prevented it.[46] I am genuinely fearful that our luck will eventually run out. Perhaps one can keep this possibility in mind when investigating the image of the nuclear mushroom cloud.

I have not yet read much of the literature on this image, but I have been able to identify a wide range of relevant scholarly publications. Checking ‘mushroom cloud’ on Google Scholar reveals, among works on many other topics (to do with different aspects of nuclear weapons, nuclear war and nuclear culture but also much else),[47] the following publications dealing specifically with the visualisation of the nuclear explosions:

- Peggy Rosenthal, ‘The Nuclear Mushroom Cloud as Cultural Image’, American Literary History vol. 3, no. 1 (1991), pp. 63-92,

- Vincent Leo, ‘The Mushroom Cloud Photograph: From Fact to Symbol’, Afterimage vol. 13, nos. 1-2 (1985), pp. 6-12.

A search for ‘mushroom cloud photography’[48] adds the following references:

- Paula Rabinowitz, ‘Love the Bomb: Picturing Nuclear Explosions’, The Routledge Companion to Photography Theory, ed. Mark Durden and Jane Tormey, London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 211-27,[49]

- Colin Hemez, ‘Photographic Visions of the Atomic Sublime’, Bowdoin Journal of Art (2018), pp. 1-41, file:///C:/Users/pkrame00/Downloads/Photographic_Visions_of_the_Atomic_Subli.pdf. [50]

Searching ‘mushroom cloud’, ‘mushroom cloud images’ (or ‘the image of the mushroom cloud’), ‘mushroom cloud photography’, ‘mushroom cloud pictures’ etc. on Google Books[51] leads to a wide range of potentially relevant titles, many dealing more or less extensively with visualisations of the mushroom cloud, most notably the following:

- Samuel S. Kloda, The Atomic Bomb in Images and Documents: The Manhattan Project and the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Jefferson, N: McFarland, 2022,

- Susan Courtney, ‘Framing the Bomb in the West: The View from Lookout Mountain’, Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex, ed. Haidee Wasson and Lee Grieveson, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018, pp. 210-26,

- Kevin Hamilton and Ned O'Gorman, Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War, Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2018,

- Finis Dunaway, ‘Dr. Spock is Worried: Visual Media and the Emotional History of American Environmentalism’, Rendering Nature: Animals, Bodies, Places, Politics, ed. Marguerite S. Shaffer and Phoebe S. Kropp, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015, pp. 138-61,

- John O’Brian (ed.), Camera Atomica, London: Black Dog, 2015,

- Catherine Jolivette (ed.), British Art in the Nuclear Age, London: Routledge, 2014, esp. chs. 3 and 9,

- Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, ‘The Iconic Image of the Mushroom Cloud and the Cold War Nuclear Optic’, Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, ed. Geoffrey Batchen et al (eds), London: Reaktion Books, 2011,

- John O’Brian, ‘Editing Armageddon’, Editing the Image: Strategies in the Production and Reception of the Visual, ed. Elizabeth M. Legge, Catherine M. Soussloff and Mark Arthur Cheetham, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008,

- Peter Kuran, How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb, Blacksburg, VA: VCE Publications, 2007,

- Michael Light, 100 Suns: 1945-1962, London: Jonathan Cape, 2003 (mainly a collection of photographs),

- Kyo Maclear, Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the Art of Witness, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999, and

- Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

There is an extensive scholarly literature on films dealing with nuclear weapons and/or nuclear war. Such publications sometimes carry the term ‘mushroom cloud’ in their titles, although they do by no means focus exclusively, or even substantially, on the examination of actual images of mushroom clouds. There are also many film books that do not have the term ‘mushroom cloud’ in the title but feature the image of a mushroom cloud on the cover. A wide range of relevant titles can be found by searching ‘mushroom clouds on film’, ‘mushroom cloud cinema’ and similar phrases on Google Books, including the following:

- Mike Bogue, Watching the World Die: Nuclear Threat Films of the 1980s, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2023

- Mike Bogue, Apocalypse Then: American and Japanese Atomic Cinema, 1951-1967, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017,

- Matthew Edwards (ed.), The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema: Critical Essays, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015,

- Michael Scheibach, Atomic Narratives and American Youth: Coming of Age with the Atom, 1945-1955, Jefferson: McFarland, 2003,

- James F. Shapiro, Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film, New York: Routledge, 2002,

- Joyce Evans, Celluloid Mushroom Clouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb, New York: Avalon, 1998,

- Toni A. Perrine, Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety, New York: Garland, 1998, and

- Mick Broderick (ed.), Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film, London: Kegan Paul, 1996.[52]

I expect there to be at least some discussion of the image of the mushroom cloud in all of these books. In addition there are numerous publications (both books and essays) on individual films that prominently feature mushroom clouds. For example, as a search on Google Scholar will confirm, there is a particularly large number of publications on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and on the made-for-television movie The Day After (1983).

Finally, to return to semantic basics again, I thought that it may be worth thinking a bit more about the two components of the term ‘mushroom cloud’. While it is not obvious to me what it can add to our understanding of images of nuclear explosions, there is in fact a very interesting literature about mushrooms and about clouds.[53] There also is, for example, a 2015 Spanish exhibition entitled ‘Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime’ which examined the following intriguing question: ‘Since the second half of the 20th century, we have lived under the shadow of two clouds: the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb, and now the “cloud” of information networks. How did the metaphor of post-war paranoia become the utopian metaphor for today’s interconnected world?’[54]

[1] Thanks to Oliver Gruner for his help with this manuscript.

[2] Cp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions. All websites referenced in this article were last checked on 5 February 2024. It is worth examining how well-known the term ‘mushroom cloud’ actually is. When previously working on a project about NASA’s 1972 ‘Blue Marble’ photograph, it was quite surprising to find out that many people simply did not know this term; almost all seemed to be familiar with pictures of the whole Earth as seen from space, including versions of NASA’s 1972 photograph, but many did not know that this image was known as the Blue Marble. It is entirely possible that something similar is the case for the term ‘mushroom cloud’.

[3] About the naming of the test, see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)#Code_name. While in giving the test this name J. Robert Oppenheimer appears to have referred to the Trinity (of Father, Son and Holy Ghost) in Christianity, he was also familiar with the trinitarian God of Hinduism (Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer).

The literature about Oppenheimer, his role in the development of the first nuclear bomb and also his public statements and image is extensive. There is the biography which the 2023 Oppenheimer movie was largely based upon: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. More recent publications include (in reverse chronological order) Lindsey Michael Banco, The Meanings of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016; Michael A Day, The Hope and Vision of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2015; David K. Hecht, Storytelling and Science: Rewriting Oppenheimer in the Nuclear Age, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015; and James Kunetka, The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer - The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb, Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2015.

[4] Oppenheimer made these two comments long after the Trinity test, claiming that they were thoughts going through his head while witnessing that first nuclear explosion. There is much more to be said about exactly when, in what context and why Oppenheimer presented these quotations. Cp. James Temperton, ‘“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”: The Story of Oppenheimer’s Infamous Quote’, Wired, 21 July 2023, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/manhattan-project-robert-oppenheimer; and Mani Rao, ‘“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”: Truth and Lies in Oppenheimer’s Gita Moment’, Scroll.in, 5 August 2023, https://scroll.in/article/1053670/now-i-am-become-death-the-destroyer-of-worlds-truth-and-lies-in-oppenheimers-gita-moment.

[5] There is of course a vast amount of writing about Hindu holy scripture, its translations into English and the meanings of individual verses. One also needs to take into account what Oppenheimer’s particular understanding of the passages he quoted was, and what other people, not familiar with the Bhagavad Gita, might have taken them to mean. This is a bit of a minefield, and I can’t say that I have traversed it yet. However, as basic introductions I found the following quite useful: Vasudha Narayanan, ‘Oppenheimer often used Sanskrit verses, and the Bhagavad Gita was special for him − but not in the way Christopher Nolan’s film depicts it’, The Conversation, 16 August 2023, https://theconversation.com/oppenheimer-often-used-sanskrit-verses-and-the-bhagavad-gita-was-special-for-him-but-not-in-the-way-christopher-nolans-film-depicts-it-211253; and Debjani Ganguly, ‘“Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds” – the Bhagavad Gita explained’, The Conversation, 24 October 2023, https://theconversation.com/now-i-am-become-death-the-destroyer-of-worlds-the-bhagavad-gita-explained-214365.

[6] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Aeby, with the original photo at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Aeby#/media/File:TrinityColorLarge.jpg and a cropped version at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Aeby#/media/File:Trinity_shot_color.jpg.

[7] See https://thebulletin.org/2024/01/press-release-doomsday-clock-remains-at-90-seconds-to-midnight/.

[8] There is a rich literature on future risks for humanity, including extinction risks as well as so-called suffering risks, in which nuclear war often does not feature quite as prominently as one might have expected, more attention being paid for example to the dangers of artificial intelligence. For recent publications, see Richard Skiba, Shadows of Catastrophe: Navigating Modern Suffering Risks in a Vulnerable Society, London: After Midnight Publishing, 2024; Stephen Davies, Apocalypse Next: The Economics of Global Catastrophic Risks, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2024; S.J. Beard and Tom Hobson (eds). An Anthology of Global Risk, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2024; S.J. Beard et al. (eds), The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023; Emile P. Torres, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation, London: Routledge, 2023; William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View, London: Oneworld, 2022; and Tobias Baumann, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, 2022, https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Avoiding_The_Worst_final.pdf.

[9] See https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/ and https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2025-statement/.

[10] See https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2024/press-release/.

[11] I should say at the outset that the scholarly literature on everything to do with nuclear weapons is truly vast. In this text, I can only refer to a small selection of English-language publications, and most of these refer only to the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia, leaving the other nuclear powers aside. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that I have found a very recent, revisionist discussion of nuclear matters (including a detailed discussion of nuclear-related imagery and phrases in post-war culture) particularly stimulating: Peder Anker, For the Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering, London: Anthem Press, 2025. The book contains numerous references to primary and secondary sources.

[12] See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mushroom%20cloud#dictionary-entry-1.

[13] See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mushroom%20cloud#examples and https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mushroom%20cloud#word-history.

[14] See https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mushroom-cloud_n?tab=meaning_and_use#12422493.

[15] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_cloud.

[16] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_explosion.

[17] The Wikipedia entry contains numerous references to relevant reports and publications. Also see, for example, Lawrence Badash, A Nuclear Winter's Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009; and Mark A. Harwell, Nuclear Winter: The Human and Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War, New York: Springer, 1984.

[18] It is worth highlighting the fact that the particles blasted into the air by a nuclear explosion so as, among other things, to form a mushroom cloud, are not the main cause of a hypothetical nuclear winter; instead it is the soot from fires caused by nuclear explosions.

[19] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter.

[20] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer.

[21] For a fascinating literary account (mostly factual, but, unfortunately, without many source references) of the impact of Wells’ novel and also of a wide range of scientific, political, social and cultural developments related, more or less directly, to nuclear weapons, see Richard Flanagan, Question 7, London: Vintage, 2024.

[22] See, for example, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230907-the-fear-of-a-nuclear-fire-that-would-consume-earth#:~:text=In%20the%20early%20years%20of,test%20would%20ignite%20Earth's%20atmosphere.

[23] Cp. Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013; and Anker, For the Love of Bombs, ch. 5.

[24] Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962.

[25] As so often, the relevant Wikipedia entry is a good starting point; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object. Also see, for example, the literature summarised in Randall Fitzgerald, Cosmic Test Tube: Extraterrestrial Contact, Theories and Evidence, Los Angeles: Moon Lake Media, 1998. Recent publications include Robert Powell, UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don’t Know), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024; and D.W. Pasulka, American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

[26] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox.

[27] On (the search for) extraterrestrial life, see, for example, Steven J. Dick’s historical survey Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Recent publications include Avi Loeb, Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth, London: John Murray, 2023; Jensine Andresen and Octavio A. Chon Torres (eds), Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Academic and Societal Implications, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022; and Kelly C. Smith and Carlos Mariscal (eds), Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

[28] University of Bologna press release, ‘Volcanic memories: Black holes give shape to bubbles, rings and 'intergalactic smoke' filaments’, 18 October 2021, https://phys.org/news/2021-10-volcanic-memories-black-holes-intergalactic.html.

[29] Monica Young, ‘Astronomy in Pictures: Black Holes, Baby Stars, and Magnetic “Tunnels”’, Sky & Telescope, 25 October 2021, https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomy-in-pictures-black-holes-baby-stars-and-magnetic-tunnels/.

[30] This paragraph is based on Anker, For the Love of Bombs.

[31] On this point, see Anker, For the Love of Bombs, chs. 1-2, 4; also classic accounts of death and suffering in Hiroshima and Nagasaki such as Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, New York: Random House, 1968, and John Hersey, Hiroshima, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.

[32] On Curie and Meitner, see, for example, Diana Preston, Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie o Hiroshima, New York: Walker & Co., 2005; also Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015; Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, Boston: Birkhäuser, 1999; and Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, London: University of California Press, 1996.

[33] See Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg, Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

[34] See, for example, Peter Krämer, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (BFI Film Classics), London: British Film Institute, 2014; and Peter Krämer, ‘World on Fire: Reflections on Oppenheimer (2023) and Contemporary Hollywood’, Pop Junctions, 4 March 2024, https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2024/3/3/world-on-fire-reflections-on-oppenheimer-2023-and-contemporary-hollywood.

[35] Cp, Jon Petrie, ‘The Secular Word Holocaust: Scholarly Myths, History, and 20th Century Meanings’, Journal of Genocide Research vol. 2 no. 1 (2000), pp. 31–63.

[36] It is oddly moving to finalise this manuscript on 27 January 2025, which is Holocaust Memorial Day, and 28 January 2025, which is the day the latest announcement about the Doomsday Clock reveals how close, according to expert opinion, we are to a nuclear holocaust.

[37] See, for example, https://www.merr-webster.cm/dictionary/holocaust#word-history.

[38] See https://www.google.com/search?q=mushroom+cloud+photograph&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi086_N8JGEAxVXhP0HHe00BAEQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=mushroom+cloud+photograph&gs_lp=EgNpbWciGW11c2hyb29tIGNsb3VkIHBob3RvZ3JhcGgyBBAjGCdIrSVQryFYryFwAHgAkAEAmAE9oAF0qgEBMrgBA8gBAPgBAYoCC2d3cy13aXotaW1niAYB&sclient=img&ei=BJ2_ZbThNteI9u8P7emQCA&bih=539&biw=1048&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB926GB926.

[39] See https://www.google.com/search?q=mushroom+cloud+trinity+test&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwirjpnq8JGEAxUogv0HHck5BuIQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=mushroom+cloud+trinity+test&gs_lp=EgNpbWciG211c2hyb29tIGNsb3VkIHRyaW5pdHkgdGVzdDIFEAAYgARI5m1QuxpY72pwFXgAkAECmAHgAaABsRmqAQY0NS4wLjG4AQPIAQD4AQGKAgtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ6gCCsICBBAjGCfCAggQABiABBixA8ICBxAjGOoCGCfCAgsQABiABBixAxiDAcICChAAGIAEGIoFGEPCAg4QABiABBiKBRixAxiDAcICDRAAGIAEGIoFGEMYsQPCAhAQABiABBiKBRhDGLEDGIMBwgIGEAAYBRgeiAYB&sclient=img&ei=QZ2_ZevpFKiE9u8PyfOYkA4&bih=559&biw=1280&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB926GB926&hl=en.

[40] Also see, for example, https://www.istockphoto.com/search/2/image-film?phrase=mushroom+cloud, https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/mushroom-cloud, https://www.shutterstock.com/search/mushroom-cloud and https://stock.adobe.com/uk/search/images?k=mushroom%20cloud.

[41] See https://www.atomicarchive.com/media/index.html.

[42] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dfK9G7UDok.

[43] See https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mushroom+cloud+cartoons.

[44] See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lIieDOTyo&t=302shttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nuclear+explosions+in+movies. There also is an extraordinary collection of nuclear explosion films placed on YouTube by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvGO_dWo8VfcmG166wKRy5z-GlJ_OQND5. In addition, one can check the filmographies in the film literature referenced in the next section.

[45] No doubt, Google Books searches on ‘nuclear terrorism’, ‘space weapons’, ‘missile defence’, ‘arms control’, ‘nuclear proliferation’, ‘nuclear reactors’ and such like would reveal dozens more titles published recently. I am familiar with some of the older titles about these topics.

[46] Petrov is often mentioned in books about the danger of nuclear weapons, but, as far as I am aware, there is no full-scale published study of the events of that day; see, however https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov, the 2014 documentary The Man Who Saved the World, the 2015 German book Stanislaw Petrow: Der Mann, der den Atomkrieg verhinderte by Ingeborg Jacobs and the 2023 novel La redención del camarada Petrov by Argentinian writer Eduardo Sguiglia.

[47] See https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=mushroom+cloud&btnG=. Such a search can also be carried out on JSTOR, Project Muse and various other academic databases.

[48] See https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=mushroom+cloud+photography&btnG=.

[49] Also see Karen Monina B. Batinoa, Mushroom Cloud: Deconstruction of the 20th Century Icon of Power by Cai Guo-Qiang, MA dissertation, Sophia University, Tokyo, 2020; and Michael W. Kramer, ‘Apparitions in the Shadow of a Mushroom Cloud’, http://www.blex.org/research/apparitions.html, undated.

[50] Also see by the same author, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58e1aae8bf629afc2623b218/t/5a5041e59140b76bbf76192b/1515209209776/Hemez_Sublime_2016.pdf.

[51] See https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=mushroom+cloud,  https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=mushroom+cloud+images, https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=the+image+of+the+mushroom+cloud, https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=mushroom+cloud+photography and https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=mushroom+cloud+pictures.

[52] Also see Mick Broderick, Nuclear Movies: A Critical Analysis and Filmography of International Feature Length Films Dealing with Experimentation, Aliens, Terrorism, Holocaust, and Other Disaster Scenarios, 1914-1990, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1992.

[53] For recent books, see Nicholas P. Money, Mushrooms: A Natural and Cultural History, London Reaktion Books, 2017; Martin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures, London: Bodley Head, 2020; and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021; also Richard Hamblyn, Clouds: Nature and Culture, London: Reaktion Books, 2017. The following article plays on some of mushrooms’ cultural associations: Michael Banco, Lindsey, ‘Magic Mushroom Clouds: The Atomic Bomb as American Psychotrope’, Revue française d’études américaines vol. 156, no. 3 (2018), pp. 18-30.

[54] See https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/29365/under-the-clouds-from-paranoia-to-the-digital-sublime/. There is an exhibition catalogue: João Ribas, Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime, Porto: Fundação de Serralves, 2015.