Thermonuclear War To End Human History

A Nuclear bomb is a device built to release an enormous amount of energy in an explosive way with a result of nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or a combo of both processes. Moreover, it is still most unlikely that a thermonuclear war would mean the end of history, not because it is technologically impossible to end human history by the use of nuclear explosives but simply because, at this writing, even the superpowers have not procured the kinds of weapons systems that could in a realistic situation bring about such a result; nor are they likely to procure such systems. Even if a thermonuclear war were actually fought today by the existing powers, and even if it were fought with the utmost ferocity and lack of control, such a war would be

likely to end with the Southern Hemisphere and large portions of Asia largely undamaged. Deterrence is, in effect, a form of bargaining and could occur not only before but also during and after a war i.e., even if deterrence fails and war occurs, each side is likely to want to withhold some weapons in order to be able to threaten the enemy and may be anxious to settle the war while the other side still has not used its withheld weapons. However, the United States had not produced very many nuclear bombs, and it is doubtful that the U.S. strategic forces could have had anything like the decisive impact on a war that was popularly supposed indeed, these forces might have done less damage to a Soviet war effort than the Germans did in World War n by invading and occupying Soviet territory. By the late 1950s, third- and fourth-generation nuclear weapons had been procured by the United States and a large spectrum of such weapons was available to the U.S. forces, from small to multimegaton bombs. That is, we will be living either in a world in which large numbers of powers have nuclear weapons or in a world in which nuclear weapons have been effectively controlled.