For more than forty years, the threat of nuclear armageddon hung over the world, and only faded from consciousness following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union. Although the threat of nuclear war no longer occupies the publics attention, other threats have arisen to take their place. The Cold War left a legacy on the United States, the Soviet Union, and the entire world. Although some may argue that the negative effects of the cold war outweigh the positive, some good and some bad came from the Cold War. Living in fear is nothing that anyone wants to go through. Especially when that fear is so drastic as nuclear war. Not only death, but the possibility of the annihilation of the entire human race was at hands throughout the Cold War. The legacy of nuclear war left behind by the Cold War is one that would never leave.
On November 16th, 1952, the United States dropped the first Hydrogen bomb over a point slightly north of Runit Island. The bomb was dropped by a B-36H bomber and was thousands of times stronger than most atomic bombs. By the following year, the Soviet Union tested their first, and by early the 1970’s, another seven nations had succeeded in their own tests.
There are four stages following the detonation of nuclear bombs. The first is named the Flash and Fireball, which is the effect of a flash bright as the sun and the immediate burning of objects nearly nine miles away. Around two miles away, deadly x-ray pulses are sent out. People within about 50 miles of the bomb will be blinded if looking at the proceeding fireball, and those about 6.2 miles away will be extremely burned. The next stage of the nuclear bomb is nicknamed the blast. It occurs at the same time as the Flash and Fir...
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Takakura, Akiko, Taeko Teramae, Hiroko Fukada, Mamoru Yukihiro, Akira Onogi, Akihiro Takahashi, Isao Kita, and Hiroshi Sawachika. "This Is How It Feels to Be Under a Nuclear Attack." Interview. Gizmodo. Gizmodo, 6 Aug. 2010. Web. 17 May 2014. .
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"When We Tested Nuclear Bombs." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 06 May 2011. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
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When one thinks about warfare, the average mental picture is usually a movie war scene with soldiers, and planes; very rarely do people think about about the average Joe, trimming his hedge. In the short story “Grace Period”, by Will Baker, there is a man trimming his hedge outside with an electric hedge trimmer when a nuclear bomb is dropped; his wife has gone to get the mail. In “an instant [he felt as] everything stretched just slightly, a few millimeters, then contracted again” (Baker, 1989, p. 7). Although the character does not know what is happening, the reader may realize that this description is a high altitude nuclear burst. The article “Nuclear Weapon Effects”, by John Pike, describes what a nuclear bomb’s effects are and what could happen if one was dropped. Based on clues in the story and the information from the article, the reader can determine what is happening to the man and what he can expect will happen to him.
Anonymous. "What Happens When a Nuclear Bomb Explodes?" Www.sgi.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
After the first Hydrogen bomb was tested on November 1st 1952, many nations desired its power and a worldwide arms race for hydrogen bombs began. “August 12 [, 1953]: First test of Soviet thermonuclear device (Andrei Sakharov 's "Layer Cake") takes place.”(9). The USSR is the first to follow in the footsteps of the United States, since it was during the cold war, the USSR was basically forced to build and test a hydrogen bomb to prove their power and technological advancements. For the USSR, building this bomb had many prospects that made it very desirable, one was an increase in nationalism, and a showcase to the world of their power; possibly a fear tactic for easier imperialism, secondly: this gave them an economic boost as well as a boost to production: workers would take pride in what they did and therefore were more motivated to work hard. “NEW DELHI, May 17 [, 1998]— In a disclosure with potential to accelerate further a nuclear arms race with Pakistan, Indian scientists confirmed today that the largest of the five underground nuclear tests they conducted last week involved a hydrogen bomb”(10) India too followed in the arms race, their test came later yet “The news conference in New Delhi turned into another occasion for Indians to demonstrate soaring pride over the nuclear tests. The scientists were applauded by Indian reporters, asked for their autographs and generally treated much
The Hydrogen bomb had been first exploded in the year 1953. It lead to having a greater turnout than expected and was only left to be used to be used for peaceful
The first atomic bomb was not tested at all. It was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 killing over 80,000 people and almost completely leveling the entire city. It destroyed more than 4 square miles,
Two o’clock in the morning on August 29,1949 the first nuclear atomic bomb was dropped known as the “First Lighting.” It was dropped on the testing site in Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. This nuclear bomb was produced by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) also known as the Soviet Union.
On January 31st, 1950. President Harry S. Truman announces his decision for the development of the hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb was theorized to be way more powerful then the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II. Five months earlier, America lost their powerful nuclear supremacy to the Soviet Union, due to the country successfully detonating an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Several weeks later, Britain and the U.S. intelligence came to the conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top ranking scientists in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. With the collection of these events, Truman approved the massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb”.
the h-bomb was was made in 1951. Its also called the hydrogen bomb. the united states detonate the first thermonuclear weapon. the hydrogen bomb on eniwetok atoll in the pacific. the test gave the united states a short lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the soviet union. following the successful soviet detonation of an atomic device in september 1949 the united states accelerated its program to develop the next stage in atomic weaponry.popularly know as the hydrogen bomb this new weapon was approximately 1000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices. opponents of development of the hydrogen bomb included j. robert oppenheimer. one of the fathers of the atomic bomb. He and others argued that little would be accomplished except the speeding of the arms race, since it assumed that the soviets would quickly follow suits. the opponents were
At 5:30 AM July 16th 1945, the nuclear age had started. The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated. On August 6th 1942 at 8:15 AM, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a perfected atomic bomb created by the Americans, over the city of Hiroshima hoping to end the war. Thousands of people died in the two cities in Japan. They were Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the Manhattan Project”. The research and development project that produced these atomic bombs during this time was known as “the Manhattan Project”.
The nuclear bomb was the most devastating weapon ever created by man. It was developed between 1942 and 1945 during the second World War. The project to build the worlds first atomic weapon was called The Manhattan Project. The nuclear bomb was based on the idea of splitting an atom to create energy, this is called fission. Three bombs were created, “Trinity”, “Little Boy”, and “Fat Man”. “Trinity” was dropped on a test site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, proving the theories, engineering and mathematics of the bomb to be correct. Shortly after that, not more than 2 months, the U.S. performed the first actual nuclear attack in the history of war. The bomb “Little Boy” was dropped on the town of Hiroshima, instantly killing thousands. “Fat Man” was dropped shortly after on the town of Nagasaki. After the bombing almost all scientist involved with the creation of the bomb regretted its construction and spoke out against the abolishment of nuclear weapons.
When the United States caught word that Germany was close to creating the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists wanted to create it first, for the U.S. After three years of research, the first small atomic device was exploded on July 16, 1945 in the lab at Los Alamos. Having proved their concept worked, a larger scale bomb was built. Less than a month later, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (Rosenberg).
The development and usage of the first atomic bombs has caused a change in military, political, and public functionality of the world today. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki revolutionized warfare by killing large masses of civilian population with a single strike. The bombs’ effects from the blast, extreme heat, and radiation left an estimated 140,000 people dead. The bombs created a temporary resolution that lead to another conflict. The Cold War was a political standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States that again created a new worldwide nuclear threat. The destructive potential of nuclear weapons had created a global sweep of fear as to what might happen if these terrible forces where unleashed again. The technology involved in building the first atomic bombs has grown into the creation of nuclear weapons that are potentially 40 times more powerful than the original bombs used. However, a military change in strategy has came to promote nuclear disarmament and prevent the usage of nuclear weapons. The technology of building the atomic bomb has spurred some useful innovations that can be applied through the use of nuclear power. The fear of a potential nuclear attack had been heightened by the media and its release of movies impacting on public opinion and fear of nuclear devastation. The lives lost after the detonation of the atomic bombs have become warning signs that changed global thinking and caused preventative actions.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved to be fatal for the Japanese; the loss of the war and the irreplaceable loss of over 100,000 innocent lives. Prior to the bombing that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. had to develop the fatal weapon that would end the war against Japan. In the Manhattan Project (1940) the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with the construction of the facilities needed for the top-secret project. Over the next several years the scientists worked on producing the key materials for the nuclear fission- Uranium and Plutonium. In the early morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project had its first successful test at the Trinity site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The hydrogen bomb, a stronger version of nuclear bomb, which uses a fission bomb to ignite thermonuclear fuel, marked a new and extremely important stage in the nuclear arms race. Truman’s super bomb took over two years to complete. On November 1, 1952, the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb on the pacific atoll of Eniwetok. The Soviet Union did not left far behind. Nine months later, on August 12, 1953 it tested an intermediate type of hydrogen bomb.
The very first bomb was the Little Boy—dropped on August 6th of 1945—hitting Hiroshima and wiping out almost ninety-percent of the population. Tens of thousands people later died from radiation exposure ("History.com"). This atomic bomb was the start of nuclear warfare between Japan and the United States and showed the world our true power. Truman’s decision to drop both bombs on Japan had as many disadvantages as it did advantages.