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Comment by bigiain | Hacker News Reader

I suspect I have the same "nuclear archaeologist cyber-friend" as the author.

I sent a Twitter "friend" (who labelled himself a nuclear anthropologist instead of archeologist) a copy of a book called "100 Suns" by Michael Light, which is a coffee table sized book full of photos of nuclear tests. The book is eerily beautiful: http://www.michaellight.net/suns-intro

In return (and entirely unexpectedly) he send me a small package with a handful of small pieces of that Mark 17 bomb casing he collected in Albuquerque - just like that last pic in the article. They're sitting on a shelf with my piece of Trinitite and my pieces of Maralingite (sand fused to glass by an atomic test in the 50s/60s at Maralinga in South Australia)

I have some weird internet friends who know my weird interests...

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His photographs are breath taking

http://www.michaellight.net/black-mountain

I‘m stumbling down a rabbit hole of pictures

Thanks for sharing, amazing photos. I actually have his book "100 suns" but haven't got around to check out his other works until now.

My browser didn't show the accompanying text at first for some reason, so I thought I was looking at some kind of experimental military base, so depressing "oh the workers get pools I guess they must be well compensated for working in such a bleak environment" and then at the end I click the (i) button and see it's a gated community for the ultra rich

Houses of the ultra rich usually are further apart, with much more space (green, forest, whatever) between them, not so densely packed.

The scars we inflict on our planet for the sake of pragmatism I can somewhat live with. It's for the sake of vanity that makes me sick.

Is it much of a scar? Only future archaeologists will know when they dig up rocks from our era 1000 years from now.

And the payoff has been no major war since 1945, despite infinite animosity and huge defense budgets on all sides.

I'm afraid you are preaching to the choir my friend, this is the platform of "entrepreneurs" after all.

I forgot about that book. I'd seen a copy years ago. I didn't have anywhere near the money to buy it at that point.

... and looking at used copies, I'm still not going to drop that coin on the book. But thank you, I didn't know there were some online copies of the photos.

If you're ever in Sydney Australia, you're welcome to look through my copy.

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