In his annual message for peace, Benedict worried about "the race for energy sources" and well as a "fear of a possible atomic catastrophe".
"The world's worst atomic catastrophe is very far from over".
But what we now know all too well at Fukushima is that the world's worst atomic catastrophe is very far from over.
Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the U.S. readied plans for occupying the defeated country -- and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.
"Jericho" 's title sequence emerges from a black-and-white TV screen fuzzed with static, a trope that calls to mind the era when "Twilight Zone" episodes often featured characters isolated by atomic catastrophes.
Mr. Paglen's photographs included a taste of art (Paul Klee, Ai Weiwei) and extensive documentary evidence of the human race's murderous and suicidal tendencies, with pictures of atomic catastrophes, melted glaciers and predator drones.
They concern teenagers, rock 'n' roll, juvenile delinquents, monsters, aliens, killers, spies, detectives, bikers, communists, drugs, natural catastrophes, atomic bombs, the prehistoric past, and the projected future.
It was the first time Japan had confronted the threat of a significant spread of radiation since the greatest nightmare in its history, a catastrophe exponentially worse: the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, which resulted in more than 200,000 deaths from the explosions, fallout and radiation sickness.
The Doomsday Clock, developed by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to monitor the threat of global catastrophe from man-made technologies such as nuclear weapons, was moved back by a minute to reflect a slightly safer world.But since then, relations between America and Russia have grown chillier, particularly over Ukraine.
Not surprisingly, a week into the new administration, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock half a minute closer toward catastrophe – the closest the clock has been to "midnight" since 1953.
And in the last two months, the Egyptian revolution and the Japanese catastrophe – I mean, obviously, not just the earthquake but the atomic menace – shows that we cannot think in the old ways.
