This painting’s complex imagery critiques the artist’s work for the US-led Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The central nuclear mushroom cloud is encircled by a blue Greek letter “O” (Omega)—a traditional symbol of the biblical Apocalypse. At the upper right, an owl, a symbol of wisdom, is swallowed by a parrot, a symbol of folly. The skeleton key clutched by the owl has unlocked the secret of nuclear energy, but it also has opened the mythological Pandora’s box of evil, unleashing confetti-like nuclear fallout on the innocent children below.

The foreground figure, derived from a Life magazine photograph of the Olympic decathlon champion Bob Mathias, serves as a surrogate self-portrait of the young artist as a member of the US team that created the atomic bomb. Akin to a godlike creator, Jess looks down upon the curved surface of the earth and watches the nuclear nightmare unfold.