Before/After of "Happy End?" and my Intention

This is for all who are interested in a Before-After of my most recent Image "Happy End?".
The Left Image is mine the right one has been shot by Thomas Hawk.
I had to make a lot of changes to both images to get the effect I wanted.
My aim was to create a end-of-the-world feeling which makes the viewer think about it.
I hope i reached this aim.
I won't publish what I did in detail but I used many adjustment layers i.e. curves, channel mixer and B/W and blended this with different layer styles.
The hardest job was it to match the tones of the mushroom cloud with the ones of my main image. I feared that it would look stupid and like a bad try but after half an hour which I spent only with this mushroom cloud it had the tones I wanted and it looked like it does now.
I hope this inpspires you to try a bit more in the future.

My Intention with this shot was not the one it is now from the beginning on.
When I took this shot I just wanted to achieve a calm, warm image.
The result was pretty ok but I wasnt convinced of it in total.
So it sleeped on my desktop almost for a month until I looked at it another time.
This time I knew what I wanted to do with it from the beginning on.
I searched flickr for a matching image of a mushroom cloud and this is what came out.

I would appreciate feedback for my first tries in writing a blog.
It is the first time in my life that I do something like that so I like to receive constructive criticism.
Thanks in advance.