Nuclear war

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A nuclear war is when two or more groups or countries fight with nuclear weapons. It is a war where the fighting is not done mainly with soldiers fighting battles, but instead through airplanes and missiles built to carry nuclear bombs to the enemy.

Many people fear that there will be a large nuclear war some day. The human race has built enough nuclear weapons and carrying devices over the last sixty years, that a nuclear war using all nuclear bombs on Earth would probably kill nearly every human being on the planet. Even if the direct explosions did not kill everyone, the fallout and radiation that always come with this kind of warfare would kill many more people. It is thought that a true large-scale nuclear war could create an artificial nuclear winter by blocking out the sun. Such an event could wipe out mankind and many animal species on Earth.

Only two nuclear bombs were ever used in a war. Both bombs fell on Japanese cities. The first on Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki. The bombings took place near the end of World War II. Back then, the United States was the only country with nuclear weapons. Today, nuclear warfare is likely to involve nuclear weapons on both sides of the war.

Nuclear war is therefore one of the largest threats to humanity's continued existence in modern times. It is unlikely that a nuclear conflict can be limited to a small-scale affair. The number of nations that can make nuclear attacks gets larger every few years, and so far, only the threat of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) has forced nuclear-armed nations to avoid causing a nuclear war.

The greatest threats of nuclear war were in the Cold War days of confrontation between the world's two superpowers, when the United States of America and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics both feared and armed against such a war launched by the other side. Through forty years of tension, these two powers avoided direct conflict out of fear of annihilation and fought mostly through proxies across the globe.

In the future, as nuclear weaponry and delivery devices become more affordable to smaller countries, however, the risk of war will increase again. Even in the unlikely event that a nuclear exchange could be limited in scope, the effects of such weapons would likely cause great damage over several generations to the areas attacked.