A History of Nuclear Weapons

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Recommended: Historiography of the origins of the cold war

Though most people have never thought much about it, mankind nearly became extinct in a war that had no actual fighting; this war got the name the Cold War (SV; SV). The Cold War was the building tension between the United States and the Soviet Union some years following WWII. Nuclear weapons had a substantial influence on the Arms Race during the Cold War. At its peak, the two super-powers had enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on Earth! Though the Cold War had many different aspects during the stockpiling of weapons, the most influential was the invention of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear Weapons research started in the United States with the creation of the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was started when a scientist from the UK came to the United States with the idea of creating a new, more powerful bomb. The first test was done in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. This test showed the world that we had new technology that could be extremely dangerous for our enemies. The Soviets tested their first nuclear bomb four years later in 1949 (“Nuclear Warfare”).
The Arms race continued and soon the weapons started to become much more deadly than anyone could have every predicted. “From 1951-1965 the U.S. averaged producing 2,108 nuclear weapons a year,” (Lindley). On May 12, 1951 the first Thermonuclear Hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, was tested in the United States; this bomb was so much stronger than the atomic bomb that research stopped soon after its invention (SV;SV). Soon the research shifted to submarine-launched ballistic missiles called SLBMs that were first tested in 1960 but were soon to be outclassed by a new, more advanced type of weapon (“Nuclear Warfare”).
Inter-continental ballistic missiles began to beco...

... middle of paper ...

...ton, an entire civilization could be destroyed within the blink of an eye.

Works Cited

Jameson, Robert P. “Armageddon’s Shortening Fuse: How Advances In Nuclear
Weapons Technology Pushed Strategists To Mutually Assured Destruction, 1945-1962.” Air Power History 60.1 (2013): 40-53 Academic Search Premier. Web 27 Feb. 2014.
Kristensen, Hans M., and Robert S. Norris. “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945-
2013.” Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists 69.5 (2013): 75-81. Academic Search Premier. Web 20 Feb. 2014.
Lindley, Dan, and Kevin Clemency. “Low-Cost Nuclear Arms Races.” Bulletin of The
Atomic Scientists 65.2 (2009): 44-51. Academic Search Premier Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
“Nuclear Warfare.” Hutchinson Encyclopedia. 2011 eLibrary. Web 28 Feb. 2014.
Weiss, Ann E. The Nuclear Arms Race: Can We Survive It? Boston, Massachusetts,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983. Print.

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