"and calculate that even with nuclear weapon stockpiles at Cold War highs, although there would be billions of casualties, billions more rural people would nevertheless survive. However, others have argued that secondary effects of a nuclear holocaust, such as nuclear famine and societal collapse, would cause almost every human on Earth to starve to death. So far, two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, a uranium gun-type device (code name ""Little Boy"") was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima."
"the world's first and only nuclear power for four years (1945–1949), until the Soviet Union managed to produce its own nuclear weapon. The United States has the second largest number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world, after Russia. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in combat: two nuclear weapons were used by the United States against Japan during World War II in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Altogether, the two bombings killed 120,000 people and injured another 130,000 while devastating hundreds or thousands of military bases, factories, and cottage industries. The U.S. conducted an extensive nuclear testing"
"governed by several international conventions and treaties, although not all countries have signed and ratified them: The only country to have used a nuclear weapon in war is the United States, which dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. There are eight countries that have declared they possess nuclear weapons and are known to have tested a nuclear weapon, only five of which are members of the NPT. The eight are China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Israel is considered by most analysts"
"Nuclear weapons of the United States The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the separate bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted over a thousand nuclear tests and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems. Between 1940 and 1996, the U.S. government spent at least $ in present-day terms on nuclear weapons, including platforms development (aircraft, rockets and facilities), command and control, maintenance, waste management and administrative costs. It is estimated that, since 1945,"
"Nuclear weapons debate The nuclear weapons debate refers to the controversies surrounding the threat, use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Even before the first nuclear weapons had been developed, scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were divided over the use of the weapon. The only time nuclear weapons have been used in warfare was during the final stages of World War II when United States Army Air Forces B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945. The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s ethical justification for"
"History of nuclear weapons Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. Building on scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada collaborated during World War II, in what was called the Manhattan Project, to counter the suspected Nazi German atomic bomb project. In August 1945, two fission bombs were dropped on Japan, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in combat. The Soviet Union started development shortly thereafter with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after that both countries developed even"
"nuclear weapons first came into being during the last months of WWII, with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the only use of nuclear weapons in combat. For a decade after World War II, the United States and later the Soviet Union (and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom and France) developed and maintained a strategic force of bombers that would be able to attack any potential aggressor from bases inside their countries. Before the development of a capable strategic missile force in the Soviet Union, much of the war-fighting doctrine held by western"
"weapons, while the U.S., the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, maintains a nuclear arsenal of 5,113 warheads. However, this double-standard is legitimated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a party. The U.S. has been criticized for supporting dictatorships with economic assistance and military hardware. Particular dictatorships have included Musharraf of Pakistan, the Shah of Iran, Museveni of Uganda, warlords in Somalia, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Park Chung-hee of South Korea, Generalissimo Franco of Spain, Melez Zenawi of Ethiopia, Augusto Pinochet in"
"Nuclear warfare Nuclear warfare (sometimes atomic warfare or thermonuclear warfare) is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is used to inflict damage on the enemy. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological warfare result. A major nuclear exchange would have long-term effects, primarily from the fallout released, and could also lead to a ""nuclear winter"" that could last for decades, centuries, or even millennia after the initial attack. Some analysts dismiss the nuclear winter hypothesis,"
"France, China The primary application to date has been military (i.e. nuclear weapons), and the remainder of explosions include the following: Only two nuclear weapons have been deployed in combat—both by the United States against Japan in World War II. The first event occurred on the morning of 6 August 1945, when the United States Army Air Forces dropped a uranium gun-type device, code-named ""Little Boy"", on the city of Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people, including 20,000 Japanese combatants and 20,000 Korean slave laborers. The second event occurred three days later when the United States Army Air Forces dropped a plutonium"
"4,018 are part of the U.S. stockpile. Of the stockpiled warheads, the U.S. stated in its April 2017 New START declaration that 1,411 are deployed on 673 ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers. The United States first began developing nuclear weapons during World War II under the order of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, motivated by the fear that they were engaged in a race with Nazi Germany to develop such a weapon. After a slow start under the direction of the National Bureau of Standards, at the urging of British scientists and American administrators, the program was put under the"
"These bombings caused injuries that resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel. The ethics of these bombings and their role in Japan's surrender are subjects of debate. Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated over two thousand times for testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them. The only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and acknowledge possessing them—are (chronologically by date of first test) the United States, the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia), the United Kingdom, France,"
"400 bombs. The American monopoly on nuclear weapons lasted only four years before the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb in September 1949. The United States responded with the development of the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear weapon a thousand times as powerful as the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such ordinary fission bombs would henceforth be regarded as small tactical nuclear weapons. By 1986, the United States would have 23,317 nuclear weapons, while the Soviet Union had 40,159. By 2017, nine nations had nuclear weapons, but Japan was not one of them. Japan reluctantly signed the Treaty on the"
"there will come a day when civilization's luck runs out. During the Cuban missile crisis, U.S. president John F. Kennedy estimated the odds of nuclear war at ""somewhere between one out of three and even"". The United States and Russia have a combined arsenal of 14,700 nuclear weapons, and there is an estimated total of 15,700 nuclear weapons in existence worldwide. Beyond nuclear, other military threats to humanity include biological warfare (BW). By contrast, chemical warfare, while able to create multiple local catastrophes, is unlikely to create a global one. Nuclear war could yield unprecedented human death tolls and habitat"
"(those few nations with capability) has detonated roughly 1,700 nuclear explosions, all but 6 as tests. Of these, six were peaceful nuclear explosions. Nuclear tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the 20th century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons had a staged test of them. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to a nuclear explosion. Additionally, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific"
"join the treaty if they forswear nuclear weapons. Research into the development of nuclear weapons was initially undertaken during World War II by the United States (in cooperation with the United Kingdom and Canada), Germany, Japan, and the USSR. The United States was the first and is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon in war, when it used two bombs against Japan in August 1945. After surrendering to end the war, Germany and Japan ceased to be involved in any nuclear weapon research. In August 1949, the USSR tested a nuclear weapon, becoming the second country to"
"United States and weapons of mass destruction The United States is known to have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. The U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat, when it detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It had secretly developed the earliest form of the atomic weapon during the 1940s under the title ""Manhattan Project"". The United States pioneered the development of both the nuclear fission and hydrogen bombs (the latter involving nuclear fusion). It was"
"Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons known - the archetypal weapons of mass destruction. Throughout the Cold War, the opposing powers had huge nuclear arsenals, sufficient to kill hundreds of millions of people. Generations of people grew up under the shadow of nuclear devastation, portrayed in films such as ""Dr. Strangelove"" and ""The Atomic Cafe"". However, the tremendous energy release in the detonation of a nuclear weapon also suggested the possibility of a new energy source. Nuclear power is a type of nuclear technology involving the controlled use of nuclear fission to"
"US has an estimated 4,018 nuclear weapons in either deployment or storage. This figure compares to a peak of 31,225 total warheads in 1967 and 22,217 in 1989, and does not include ""several thousand"" warheads that have been retired and scheduled for dismantlement. The Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, is the only location in the United States where weapons from the aging nuclear arsenal can be refurbished or dismantled. In 2009 and 2010, the administration of President Barack Obama declared policies that would invalidate the Bush-era policy for use of nuclear weapons and its motions to develop new ones. First,"
"an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in war, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces detonated a uranium gun-type fission bomb nicknamed ""Little Boy"" over the Japanese city of Hiroshima; three days later, on August 9, the U.S. Army Air Forces detonated a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb nicknamed ""Fat Man"" over the Japanese city of Nagasaki."
"of pariah states, such as North Korea (possibly soon to be joined by Iran), armed with nuclear weapons as well as the declared ambition of terrorists to steal, buy or build a nuclear device. Nuclear weapons debate The nuclear weapons debate refers to the controversies surrounding the threat, use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Even before the first nuclear weapons had been developed, scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were divided over the use of the weapon. The only time nuclear weapons have been used in warfare was during the final stages of World War II when United States Army"
"in various op-ed columns have proposed an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end. The four have created the Nuclear Security Project to advance this agenda. Organizations such as Global Zero, an international non-partisan group of 300 world leaders dedicated to achieving nuclear disarmament, have also been established. Operational American strategic nuclear forces, July 1, 2016 Notes: Sources Nuclear weapons of the United States The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the separate bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before"
"machines from Pakistan to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. North Korea announced in 2003 that it had several nuclear explosives. The first claimed detonation was the 2006 North Korean nuclear test, conducted on October 9, 2006. On May 25, 2009, North Korea continued nuclear testing, violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718. A third test was conducted on , two tests were conducted in 2016 in January and September, followed by test a year later in September 2017. History of nuclear weapons Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. Building on scientific"
"Three days later, on August 9, a plutonium implosion-type device (code name ""Fat Man"") was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 120,000 people. After World War II, nuclear weapons were also developed by the Soviet Union (1949), the United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), and the People's Republic of China (1964), which contributed to the state of conflict and extreme tension that became known as the Cold War. In 1974, India, and in 1998, Pakistan, two countries that were openly hostile toward each other, developed nuclear weapons. Israel (1960s) and North"
"the United States. The current number of warheads is unknown, but as of 2017 it is thought to be in the low hundreds. China is the only nuclear weapons state to have guaranteed the non-first use of nuclear weapons. After World War II, the balance of power between the Eastern and Western blocs and the fear of global destruction prevented the further military use of atomic bombs. This fear was even a central part of Cold War strategy, referred to as the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. So important was this balance to international political stability that a treaty, the"
"Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki During the final stage of World War II, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The United States dropped the bombs after obtaining the consent of the United Kingdom, as required by the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed 129,000–226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. They remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. In the final year of the war, the Allies prepared for what was anticipated to be a very costly invasion"
"land mines and small arms, which are often the weapons of choice in contemporary conflicts. Even before the first nuclear weapons had been developed, scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were divided over the use of the weapon. The role of the two atomic bombings of the country in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s ethical justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. The question of whether nations should have nuclear weapons, or test them, has been continually and nearly universally controversial. Over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were conducted at various sites around"
"Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA)'s 2015 report: Occupational Radiation Protection in Severe Accident Management. Nuclear warfare and weapons are staple elements of speculative fiction. Nuclear warfare Nuclear warfare (sometimes atomic warfare or thermonuclear warfare) is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is used to inflict damage on the enemy. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological warfare result. A major nuclear exchange would have long-term effects, primarily from the"
"the United States produced more than 70,000 nuclear warheads, which is more than all other nuclear weapon states combined. The Soviet Union/Russia has produced approximately 55,000 nuclear warheads since 1949, France built 1,110 warheads since 1960, the United Kingdom built 835 warheads since 1952, China built about 600 warheads since 1964, and other nuclear powers built fewer than 500 warheads all together since they developed their first nuclear weapons. Until November 1962, the vast majority of U.S. nuclear tests were above ground. After the acceptance of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, all testing was relegated underground, in order to"
"of the deaths from Hiroshima and Nagasaki died two to five years afterward from radiation exposure. A radiological weapons is a type of nuclear weapon designed to distribute hazardous nuclear material in enemy areas. Such a weapon would not have the explosive capability of a fission or fusion bomb, but would kill many people and contaminate a large area. A radiological weapon has never been deployed. While considered useless by a conventional military, such a weapon raises concerns over nuclear terrorism. There have been over 2,000 nuclear tests conducted since 1945. In 1963, all nuclear and many non-nuclear states signed"
"civilised countries in the conduct of war. The novel ""Dune"" discusses atomic weapons, and its sequel ""Dune Messiah"" employs one called a Stone Burner. In the ""Star Wars"" universe, the Death Star is a moveable, multi-use WMD (meaning that it, unlike most WMD missiles, can be used thousands of times.) In the ""Babylon 5"" universe, WMDs have been used a number of times, most directly by the Earth Alliance (the Earth-Minbari War uses nuclear weapons), the Army of Light (the Shadow War, also nuclear), the Centauri (Narn-Centauri War, planetary bombardment with asteroids by mass drivers), as well as on their"
"Russia and weapons of mass destruction According to the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that assesses nuclear weapon stockpiles, as of 2018, the Russian Federation possesses 7,850 total nuclear warheads, of which 1,600 are strategically operational. This is in large part due to the special bomber counting rules allowed by the New START treaty, which counts each strategic nuclear bomber as one warhead irrespective of the number of warheads—gravity bombs and/or cruise missiles carried by the aircraft. The figures are, by necessity, only estimates because ""the exact number of nuclear weapons in each country's possession is a closely held"
"its nuclear arsenal. Thus, no two nuclear powers have yet fought a conventional war directly, with the exception of brief skirmishes between for example, United States and China in the Korean War (1950-1953), China and Russia in the 1969 Sino-Soviet conflict and between India and Pakistan in the 1999 Kargil War. Conventional warfare, which is waged by the state, has become something not worthy of a declaration of war. Instead, those capable of fighting underneath the nuclear umbrella (supranational terrorists, corporate mercenaries, ethnic militias, and so on) have now come to dominate the majority of conflict in the post-modern era."