Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette

They dropped the bomb in '45 to end the world war

No one had ever seen such a terrible sight before

The world looked on with eyes wide to see where it might lead

The politics of power pass around the seed

It was a time to remember, we never can forget

They were playin' Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian roulette

They arose like the saviors of the modern human race

With radiation halos that hung about their face

With the key to the sure cure and the treatment of our ills

A hot shot of cobalt and a pocket full of pills

Speaking always of the enemy who lurked across the sea

While they crept in among us like a carrier disease

Deep down inside the bunkers of the concrete and the lead

Einstein's disciples work steadily ahead

Making heavy metal power plants to fire the city lights

All you can hear in the underground is the humming through the night

The walls of tight security circle all around

Where they spill out their poison and they bury it in the ground

Hole up in the harbours hidden secretly away

Warheads and submarines wait to make their play

The military masterminds improve on their designs

The soldiers get doped up and stumble through the lines

The spills into the river get carried out by the tide

They call this security but we're not satisfied

Our statesmen and leaders with their politicians pay

Quick to heed the hand that feeds, they're careful what they say

They call out experts to assure us, to wave their magic wands

This is the power of the future and the future marches on

And they call in all theirs favours, all their political gains

While the spills fill the rivers and settle in the plains

They've caused the death of millions, that's their stock and trade

They will be afflicted by the fallout that they've made

They've sealed their own inevitable doom and it must surely come

Not even the moons of Jupiter will be far enough way to run

When the earth that they've assaulted begins to turn around

And the unavoidable gravity sucks them to the ground

I know the minds behind them, they are fiddled full of holes

Not to be trusted with their hands at the controls

Their eyesight it is twisted by the glory of their careers

The heaped praise of flattery is music to their ears

To listen to them talk about how it hasn't happened yet

Is like playin' Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian roulette.

• Artist:Jim Page