It’s 70 years since the American atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on August 6 1945. Followed shortly after by the attack on Nagasaki on August 9, over 129,000 people are believed to have died in what remains the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare.
The devastation of two Japanese cities shocked people around the globe, but the threat only grew as the US and Soviet Union stockpiled nuclear missiles during the Cold War, and the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea developed their own bombs.
Realising that nobody was safe from nuclear destruction helped spark the now-iconic global peace movement. Over the years, it has produced some pretty incredible imagery. Perhaps because, hey, there’s no better motivation for putting pen to paper than trying to stop the annihilation of the human race.
Here are some of the most powerful pieces from seven decades of the anti-nuclear movement.
Peter Kennard
Ralph Steadman
Keith Haring
Frederic Henri Kay for CND
Banksy
Peter Kennard
Kevin Ford’s alternative music video for Radiohead’s ‘4 Minute Warning’, inspired by Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control
Weisser, Tarot Press
Hiroshima survivor Hiroharu Kono
Unknown
Peter Kennard
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Unknown
Yusaku Kamekura
Unknown
Brian Barnes
British designer Gerald Holtom’s original sketches for the iconic CND logo
If you feel like there’s no place for nuclear weapons, one thing you can do is join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
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