There was a time not too long ago when cigarette adverts featured doctors. In fact, Camel even went so far as to claim at one point that “More doctors smoke Camels”…

Of course, the advert was intended to make the consumer believe that smoking was safe, as at that point studies had started to show that there was a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. Mind you, such studies were, at the time, little known or largely scoffed at, but the point is that people were sold the belief that smoking was a safe, pleasurable pastime.

I mention the above because I was changing the background on my phone the other day and came across more military themed wallpapers than all other themes combined. So I spent some time today searching online to see just how popular military themed desktop wallpapers are – and, not surprisingly, they’re immensely popular. The question is why?

The following is a desktop picture of a Tomahawk missile being fired from a naval vessel. That large ball of light that you see, that’s the missile’s propulsion, the majority of it obscured by darkness.

So why would someone use that as their desktop wallpaper, hang a poster of something similar on their wall, or anything of the like? What is the fascination?

The missile being launched in that picture is made by Raytheon/McDonnell Douglas who is contracted by the Department of Defense on behalf of the American people to produce and deliver it. The destructive capability of the missile varies. It can be deployed conventionally as a 1,000lb Bullpup, as a combined effects bomb (BLU-97/B), or as a 200 kiloton W80 nuclear device (though SALT regulations have since eliminated the latter possibility). In short, Tomahawk missiles are devastating weapons that have the ability to deliver death from up to 2,500 kilometers at subsonic speed.

So I got to thinking. What if I were to produce a series of desktop images that show what a Tomahawk missile is capable of doing to human beings?

For example…

And that would just be from damage done to surrounding structures that led to the child being killed. Because were that child within the immediate blast radius, all that would be left of them could be poured into a small plastic bag – if that.

I figure if you have the inclination to champion the image of a weapon then you should have the same desire to champion what the results look like. And if you don’t, then you’ve been sold something. In fact, you can be sold anything.