How did we get to where we are in nuclear warfare? How far have we actually gone? What drove us to creating such advanced weapons? What do we have? Which countries had an early start in nuclear development.
Nuclear weapons have come a long way. Originally nuclear weapons were developed in fear that the Nazis would develop them first. The early development of the US Nuclear bomb was known as "The Manhattan Project". The Manhattan Project which was formally know as "Manhattan Engineer District" while it was under the control of US Military. As the Manhattan Project was developed further, no actual bombs were dropped other than testing in New Mexico, that was until Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 The "Little Boy" was dropped, and began the surrender of the Japanese during World War II. Just 3 days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki was bombed. This time, the "Fat Man" was used. On August 14. 1945. Japan surrendered.
By 1949, the USSR had develop-ed their first nuclear bomb, which is part of why America went on to produce larger bombs. In 1960, France was adding its own bombs to the stockpile. The difference was that the early French bombs were atom and hydrogen bombs. Originally, France did its testing in the Sahara, after only one test they moved to underground acquirements as by this time, Algeria was no longer part of France. Other countries seemed to be adding to this stockpile as well. Just 3 years later in 1963, China became the 5th country with nuclear weapons.
Not only were countries experimenting with nuclear bombs, but now some countries went as far as the development of nuclear power plants. Like nuclear bombs, nuclear power plants also proved to be dangerous. Their were many dangers that could easily occur such as exploding reactors, or sub reactor explosions such as steam explosions, or radiation leaks. Quickly nuclear anything became known to the world as dangerous and disasterous. One of the first major accidents occured on January 23, 1961 when a B-52 with two 24Megaton bombs crashed in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Hiroshima was bombed with a 15Kiloton bomb and killed 100,000 people instantly, as devastating as this was, the two 24Megaton bombs have an equivalent force of 24,000Kilotons; which would mean their would be an estimated 3.6 Million people if this bomb were to have annotated. This massive destruction was only one switch away from devastating as 5 of 6 safety switches failed!
Even though this danger was realized nuclear development continued. As Canada reailzed Nuclear development was and is a wise risk. Although, Canada was using their nuclear reactor to power a city (Rolphton, Ontario), the US had a total of 200 working nuclear reactors by 1962, and Britain and the USSR each had 39. As Kennedy started to realize that building up a stockpile of nuclear weapons to launch at each other might not be the best idea many new policies were put into place.
"All must realize that there is no hope of putting an end to the building up of armaments, nor of reducing the present stocks, nor, still less -- and this is the main point -- of abolishing them altogether, unless the process is complete and thorough and unless it proceeds from inner conviction: unless, that is, everyone sincerely cooperates to banish the fear and anxious expectation of war with which men are oppressed. If this is to come about, the fundamental principle on which our present peace depends must be replaced by another, which declares that the true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms but in mutual trust alone. We believe that this can be brought to pass, and we consider that, since it concerns a matter not only demanded by right reason but also eminently desirable in itself, it will prove to be the source of many benefits." -Pope John XXIII (Encyclical Letter: Pacem in Terris)
One example of this in action was the disbarment of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Another modern example of this is the way that the US planned to disarm Saddam in 2003. I do feel that total disarming is not very smart, but disarming by the means of limiting countries to a designed stockpile size may be wise. Eventually somebody is going to play unfair, when that does happen they will have the edge if no one else can fight back. Where as if everybody has nuclear WMD's, then there is always the chance of blowing up the world or killing everybody on the earth if everybody were to attack each other.
Lackey, Douglas P. Moral Principles and Nuclear Weapons. Rowman & Littlefield. 1984
Lambers, William. Nuclear Weapons. 2006
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