Opher’s Art – Nuclear Warhead – The face of evil!

Posted on by Opher

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I painted this back in 1973. I was looking at a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion and had this image of a face. The broiling clouds were like the sulci and gyri of the cerebral hemispheres. The rising shaft of dust formed the nose and the flame and dust of the ground blast was like lips.

All I had to do was add the eyes.

The face of oblivion!

4 thoughts on “Opher’s Art – Nuclear Warhead – The face of evil!”

  1. I’ve mentioned before that my old man was a physics boffin. Technically he was a design engineer. He was actually a top boy in his field. And as Derek Taylor once said “Being born in Scotland carries with it certain responsibilities”. In his case his firm scored the hugely financially viable contract of the design and installation of new environmental conditioned equipment for the long term safe storage of Scotland’s nuclear arsenal at Faslane. Faslane being only the gates to the area, with the weapons storage across the hill, 3 miles underground at Coulport. It’s all James Bond stuff with security gate after gate after gate all the way down inside. He was just one of three civilians (at that time, 1988) whom had ever got to see the weapons in their storage area. The signing of the Official Secrets Act was a prerequisite for this job. He personally designed all the technical specifications for all the necessary, some of which was manufactured in Germany. What he was only able to tell me, was – yes, there are weapons – no, I can’t tell you how many (nos. of, or megatonage), some are ready for deployment, some are not.
    That was it in entirety, he said nothing more.
    What he did say though was that on a personal basis he was happy that they were now very safely stored, because if they get too hot even in storage, they could explode!
    WTF are we doing with such horrendous shit – it’s beyond belief.

    This aspect is the only reason that I could give support to the SNP. Not for anything else though.

    1. I always thought that sooner or later there would be a catastrophe. I’m surprised there hasn’t been. I know we’ve come close a number of times.
      My daughter’s father-in-law was in management at Windscale. He has a few tales!

      1. I bet he has. And when they open that tank back up in 2037, if I’m still here, I’ll be down at the south pole!

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