Debunked: China's Moon Rover exhibit showing a nuclear mushroom cloud over Europe.

[Mick West]

This is from a robotics trade show in China earlier this year, and some people point to the nuclear explosion in the background image as having some particular significance.

However, it seems to just be an unfortunate choice of a stock image by someone not paying much attention.

The original image dates back to digital painting on deviantart.com, done by N4u2k (James Oliver) when he was 17.

http://n4u2k.deviantart.com/art/Earth-64857484

The artists responded to the usage:

Recently, pointed out something rather disturbing, in short:

Many thanks to the Chinese government (More precisely, The Chinese International Industry Fair) for stealing & printing my work, with no credit, permission or a damn note!. www.n-tv.de/wissen/China-will-….

I hope your Jade Rabbit falls into a ditch on the moon and is unable to recover, you communist bastards.


I know art is a loose term especially in todays world, but that doesn't mean the effort we put into our work is any less, and that it should be appreciated any less. How can we share what we do, if what we do is so blindly stolen. Most of the time we don't want money. Just recognition, is this too much to ask?


Edit:

I'd just like to clarify something, regarding many peoples interpretation of the location of my greatly exaggerated "bomb".
The location is highly irrelevant, because it's a reflection, it's not meant to be a highly accurate depiction of mass murder, so middle east, russia or europe. doesn't matter, If finding a location is that important to you than find one suitable to your agenda. If 17 year old me were here, he'd explain it better. I'm too old now.

"Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us"
~John F. Kennedy

The image is available from many computer wallpaper sites such as snoron.com:
http://www.snoron.com/view-nuclear_explosion_on_earth_from_space-wide.html

And many in China:

So it seems very plausible that someone who has used a site like this before for stock images simply went there, and typed in "earth from space":
http://www.snoron.com/search.html?q=earth from space

There's three possibilities here:

A) The designer simply did not realize it was a nuclear explosion, english not being their first language, or the site they got it from not labeling it.
B) They realized it, but thought it was funny.
C) It's a message from China that their space program is designed to dominate the planet via space-based nuclear weapons.

Consider another famous example of an incongruous image. It happens:

 

[Gary Cook]

This seems like the likely explanation. It would be too obscure to have to look for Earth's already drawn that happen to look like they have the explosion in just the right place etc. Although morally I wouldn't put it past the fascist types.

 

[nanotchi]

What a shame for that artist~

 

[Bill]

Th artist is from Germany. From what I can tell, he's blowing up his own area of the world.

 

[Josh Heuer]

I'm confused.
Your title indicates that you have debunked there being a nuclear mushroom cloud over Europe in the photo.
The original artist does not seem to deny this at all, in fact he all but says that's what it is, without directly saying it.

Are you saying there is no nuclear mushroom cloud in the photo?
Or are you trying to say that being there was unintentional/unnoticed by the folks using it?

If you're going with the first one, then the title of this thread is very misleading and needs to be reworded.
If you're going with the second...well that hasn't been debunked, yet. (Unless they came out and said so, they may have already)

 

[Clock]

I'm confused.
Your title indicates that you have debunked there being a nuclear mushroom cloud over Europe in the photo.
The original artist does not seem to deny this at all, in fact he all but says that's what it is, without directly saying it.

Are you saying there is no nuclear mushroom cloud in the photo?
Or are you trying to say that being there was unintentional/unnoticed by the folks using it?

If you're going with the first one, then the title of this thread is very misleading and needs to be reworded.
If you're going with the second...well that hasn't been debunked, yet. (Unless they came out and said so, they may have already)

He's debunking if the nuclear explosion in the background has any significance of some type of Nuclear War happening from China, even though the original artist stated that it is against nuclear missles.

 

[Josh Heuer]

He's debunking if the nuclear explosion in the background has any significance of some type of Nuclear War happening from China, even though the original artist stated that it is against nuclear missles.

Ok, so the thread title is misleading. He has not debunked that the picture shows a nuclear mushroom cloud. But that's what the title says. He's talking about the significance of the cloud, or better yet the choice of that picture being used.

 

[Pete Tar]

The thread title gives the general subject being looked at, the post says exactly what is being debunked.

 

[Gary Cook]

Agreed, it is not the best thread title choice but it is good Mick done the research. Some people are really freaking out over this "conspiracy theory".

 

[Pete Tar]

Those damn inscrutable orientals.

I wonder how justified fear of China is - I mean, how nuts are they? Are they particularly quarrelsome and aggressive?
Or do they just want to get along on their own terms?

 

[nanotchi]

Those damn inscrutable orientals.

I wonder how justified fear of China is - I mean, how nuts are they? Are they particularly quarrelsome and aggressive?
Or do they just want to get along on their own terms?

I would imagine anyone would want to go to war ;o