Nuclear Fission Benefits How Many Nuclear Weapons During Cold War

The worlds nuclear arsenals ballooned throughout the cold war from slightly more than 3000 weapons in 1955 to over 37000 weapons by 1965 united states 31000 and the soviet union 6000 to 47000 by 1975 united states 27000 and soviet union 20000 and over 60000 in the late 1980s united states 23000 and the soviet union 39000.

Nuclear family emotional process the cold war zombies trailer. As a result competition arose in many areas including the development of new technology and military weapons the most important being the nuclear bomb. Secure second strike the ability after being struck by a nuclear attack to strike back with nuclear weapons and cause massive damage to the enemy. Reprocessing is the name given to the physico chemical treatment of spent nuclear fuel carried on at sellafield in cumbria since the 1950s.

In order to understand the severity of the arms race during the cold war it is essential to examine the capabilities of the nuclear bomb how it unraveled in the 20th century and what. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that goes off because of nuclear reactions fission fusion or when two energy released causes an explosion. Development of nuclear weapons was the motivation behind early research into nuclear fission which the manhattan project during world war ii september 1 1939 september 2 1945 carried out most of the early scientific work on fission chain reactions culminating in the three events involving fission bombs that occurred during the war.

If we consider the number of nuclear weapons tests we can see that the cold war was a very active period of nuclear weapons development. Other entrants to the nuclear club during the cold war included britain 1952 france 1960 china 1964 india 1974 israel late 1970s and south africa early 1980s. Although nuclear weapons were only ever used in warfare during the second world war there have been over 2000 nuclear weapons tests since then.

Secure second strike capability was seen as a key nuclear deterrent during the cold warthe strategy also partially explained the extraordinarily high number of nuclear weapons maintained by both the united states and the soviet union during the. Defense establishment had yet to work out the elaborate system of planning development and mobilization that would divide nuclear weapons by type and. Two of the most destructive display of nuclear weapons was the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki during world war ii.

Most recently north korea conducted nuclear weapons tests in. The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the united states the soviet union and their respective allies during the cold warduring this very period in addition to the american and soviet nuclear stockpiles other countries developed nuclear weapons though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.