The history that set the tone
Before we might understand humanity’s current predicament, we must look back in time to the beginning of the nuclear age in 1945 with the dropping of the well-worn specimens of Little Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. With the mere release of these two bombs weighing only a combined 19,000 pounds (Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), over 120,000 Japanese were killed and 7.6 square miles of their homeland destroyed. In stark comparison, the bombing of Dresden, Germany utilized nearly 1,300 aircraft and over 7,800,000 pounds of conventional bombs; however, only 25,000 were killed and fifteen square miles destroyed (David).
The result of these weapons was, essentially, a trump card. With the United States as the sole proprietor, the country also held a monopoly on power- until the Russians came along. By 1949, through the work of spies such as Klaus Fuchs and, later on, the Rosenbergs, America’s nuclear secrets had leaked and the most powerful weapon in the world was thus held by two sides (NTI Profiles) (Klaus Fuchs). Therefore, like a game of Go Fish, each side attempted to pull a bigger card. While at the beginning of the Cold War only a handful bombs existed, at the height of the conflict, the United States and Soviet Union possessed a combined 27,000 megatons of ordnance (Johnston). One megaton is the atomic equivalent of one million tons of TNT, or about 4.18x1015 joules (The Energy From). In essence, the maximum energy produced by nuclear arms could have theoretically powered the United States at its current energy consumption for roughly 2.5 years. (Murphy) The destructive power of this arsenal could have destroyed over two million square miles or an area covering the United States from its Eastern Seaboard to Nevada (The Energy From). |
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