Claim: An image shows a nuclear bomb test conducted in Balochistan in 1998.
Fact: The picture shows a nuclear bomb test in Yucca Flat, Nevada in 1951, when the USA carried out a series of atmospheric bomb tests during the Cold War.
On 28 May 2024, X user @KhalidaBaloch02 posted (archived) a picture apparently showing the site of a nuclear bomb test in Balochistan. The image shows a cloud of smoke rising from a nuclear bomb test, likely referring to Chagai-I, one of the five nuclear tests that was carried out by Pakistan on 28 May 1998 in the Chagai district of Balochistan.
When translated from Urdu into English, the caption says: “May 28: Pakistan’s Day of Takbeer and Balochistan’s Day of Blackness.”
“Day of Takbeer” or “day of Greatness” refers to when Pakistan became the seventh nuclear power on 28 May 1998 after conducting a successful nuclear test. But the event marks a “day of Blackness” for many in Balochistan, the southwestern province of Pakistan, where the tests were conducted at the cost of health hazards for the locals. Because of this, users posted on X to protest the 28 May nuclear tests.
The accompanying hashtag “#NukeAftermathInBalochistan” also gives the impression that the image included in the post is related to Balochistan.
Alongside the first picture is another of a child, who is trying to cover the gruesome damage to the skin with a cloth, apparently having suffered skin damage due to radiation.
This fact-check is only investigating the picture of the smoke cloud rising from a nuclear test site; Soch Fact Check could not verify the origin of the photo of the child.
Fact or Fiction?
Results from a Google Reverse Image revealed that the photo in question shows a nuclear bomb testing site in Nevada in 1951.
According to Pixels, the mushroom smoke cloud arose from the Nevada Proving Ground, a nuclear testing site, when a 14-kiloton atomic bomb was dropped on Yucca Flat on 30 October 1951. The single bomb, XX-27 Charlie, was part of a series of seven nuclear tests carried out by the USA between October and December 1951, in an operation called Buster-Jangle.
Soch Fact Check also found stock photos on Alamy and Flickr, which are an exact match of the image in the claim. The description of both pictures confirms that the cloud of smoke arose from a nuclear test that was carried out in Nevada in 1951.
The Daily Mail reported the findings of a “new research,” in December 2017, which revealed the disastrous impact of nuclear tests conducted amid the Cold War between the USA and the former Soviet Union in the 1950s. The article carries the image in question, among other images of the Nevada Test Site where “Atmospheric atomic bomb tests in Nevada during the 1950s created mushroom clouds that could be seen for nearly 100 miles.”
Soch Fact Check therefore concludes that a post on X claiming to show the site of a nuclear bomb test in Balochistan is misleading. The image in the claim actually shows one of the atomic bomb tests that were carried out at the Nevada Test Site, USA in 1951.
Virality
The original claim on X garnered some 8700 views.
It was shared on X here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: An image showing a cloud of mushroom-shaped smoke arising from a nuclear test is not from Balochistan. It actually shows one of the nuclear test sites in Nevada, USA from 1951.
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Background image in cover photo: Balochistan Voices
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