Over 2,000 Nuclear Tests on One Map, 1945–2017

From the first test in 1945 to the most recent in 2017, every known nuclear test appears on the map at its test site, year by year. Counters show each country's running total, and a strip below tracks how many tests happened each year, in the air or underground. 1962 alone had 178. After the 1963 treaty, most testing moved underground, and after 1996 it almost stopped. 0:00 1945: Trinity 0:42 1950s: The Race 2:44 1962: 178 Tests in One Year 3:12 1963: Going Underground 5:36 The Test Sites 9:26 1996–2017: The Last Tests Sources & method Tests 1945–1998: SIPRI / FOA per-explosion table (Bergkvist & Ferm, 2000), via the TidyTuesday dataset: 2,051 explosions, of which 2 were the wartime uses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those two are marked on the map but not counted as tests. Tests 2006–2017: the 6 tests announced by North Korea. Total shown: 2,055 tests. Counts differ by source: the Arms Control Association's Nuclear Testing Tally lists 2,056. Each test is placed at its test site, not at its exact ground point. 29 tests without usable coordinates in the table are placed at the middle of their site. Card facts (dates, yields, places): Wikipedia articles on Ivy Mike, Castle Bravo, Tsar Bomba, Starfish Prime, Bikini Atoll, the Nevada Test Site, the Semipalatinsk Test Site and the two test ban treaties; site and yearly counts from the table above. Arms Control Association, The Nuclear Testing Tally (https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheet...) Bikini Atoll, Wikipedia: 167 residents moved to Rongerik, 7 March 1946 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_...) Nevada Test Site, Wikipedia (about 105 km northwest of Las Vegas) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_...) Ivy Mike, Wikipedia (10.4 Mt, 1 Nov 1952, Elugelab, Enewetak) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike) Castle Bravo, Wikipedia (15 Mt, 1 Mar 1954 local) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_...) Tsar Bomba, Wikipedia (50 Mt, 30 Oct 1961, about 4,000 m above the target) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba) Starfish Prime, Wikipedia (400 km altitude, 9 Jul 1962; Hawaii about 1,450 km away; about 300 streetlights out) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfis...) Cannikin, Wikipedia (about 5 Mt, 6 Nov 1971, Amchitka) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannikin) Music and sound: original, made for this channel. #history #maps #dataviz