Misleading: ‘Hiroshima Romance’ fireball clip shows pyrotechnic display in US, not China
A series of videos showing an explosion resembling an atomic bomb fireball circulated widely on platforms such as Bilibili, X, Douyin, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook in February, with some posts claiming the display is a new fireworks product manufactured in Luiyang, China.
The Chinese text in these posts included the expression 廣島之戀, which can be translated as “Love of Hiroshima” or “Hiroshima Romance” in English — an obvious reference to Hiroshima, the Japanese city where the United States dropped the world’s first nuclear bomb. An X post with the same phrase in simplified Chinese 广岛之恋 has gained over 1,200 likes and 148 comments within two days since it was posted on Feb. 8.
The expression may also allude to artistic works, notably the 1959 French film “Hiroshima Mon Amour” directed by Alain Resnais, and a 2012 Mandarin song of the same name by singers Jeremy Chang and Karen Mok, which was reportedly inspired by the film.
Other posts claimed the footage shows a nuclear bomb test (for example, here) or a failure of defective Chinese fireworks (archived here), which prompted many commenters criticizing the safety standards of Chinese firework manufacturing.
However, these claims are misleading. The footage actually shows a controlled professional fireball effect created by a pyrotechnics team based in the United States.
Through reverse image search, Annie Lab traced the clip to professional fireball displays at the annual Pyrotechnics Guild International (PGI) convention.
We then found internet comments from pyrotechnic enthusiasts (here and here) identifying the viral clips of large mushroom clouds as originating from the 2018 PGI convention in Mason City, Iowa.
We contacted YouTube user @scottyrockets1536, who confirmed they filmed the original footage on-site and uploaded it.
In a direct social media message, Bill Corbett, a veteran American pyrotechnician based in Memphis, Tennessee, and a member of the Fireball Dudes team, confirmed to Annie Lab that the video features his work.
Technical details provided by Corbett on an official website state that the large-scale explosion, colloquially called a “Super Nuke,” uses approximately 70 pounds of black powder, 250 pounds of powdered coffee creamer, and 550 gallons of gasoline. This combination produces two distinct explosions designed for a controlled professional display.
The viral versions of the video were edited in ways that removed the original context of the PGI convention. Although Liuyang is widely recognized as the world’s largest producer and trading hub for fireworks, the dramatic fireball display has nothing to do with the city in Hunan.
The reference to Hiroshima may also allude to rising diplomatic tensions between China and Japan in recent months, marked by Chinese restrictions on certain exports to Japanese entities and the cancellation of several scheduled performances by Japanese artists in China.
