“Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames.”

— John F. Kennedy, UN Speech, 1961

（中译）

During the time I was working on this painting, the Doomsday Clock was set to 90 seconds to midnight by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The painting draws inspiration from this clock as well as the theory of mutually assured destruction, commonly abbreviated as "MAD"*. I was captivated by the structure of that military and political doctrine: the ultimate equilibrium of security is achieved by the ultimate power of destruction, a mad policy based on rational deterrence.

*MAD is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would result in the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.