Some places feel heavy before you even know their history. The silence of a deserted street. The rusting shell of a factory. A forest clearing where nothing grows. Whether it’s the exclusion zone around Chernobyl’s “Red Forest” or the abandoned fishing towns near Fukushima, these spaces carry a weight that goes beyond what the eye can see.

When Parliament pushed the Online Safety Act through, the headlines promised protection. Children would be safer, parents reassured, tech giants brought to heel. Ofcom was even handed the power to fine American companies billions.

When I travelled to Östersund while preparing Decay, I wasn’t only looking at maps and weather patterns. I was listening. The forests in Jämtland and across the Västernorrland border carry a silence that is never just absence. It is a silence full of weight, a silence that presses. People there know it. They have always known it. And when they lacked the language of radiation or soil instability, they gave that silence form in story. I found myself drawn to those stories.

Roads collapsing like paper, homes vanishing into mud; such scenes have become disturbingly common in recent years. In Derbyshire, flash floods have torn through towns with ferocious force. Almost every inch of one Chesterfield terrace was “covered in a thick layer of wet brown mud”. Wallpaper shredded and carpets reduced to sodden rags…

Nuclear fear vs reality couldn’t be more opposed. Yet through popular culture, we’ve grown to fear something that is safe…