|
|
|
| Nuclear Weapons are explosive devices designed to release nuclear energy on a large scale, used primarily in military
applications. The first atomic bomb (or A-bomb), which was tested on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico,
represented a completely new type of explosive. All explosives prior to that time derived their power from the rapid
burning or decomposition of some chemical compound. Such chemical processes release only the energy of the outermost electrons in the atom. |
|
|
| During the 1960s, as concerns grew that nuclear weapons were continuing to reproduce rapidly and as the
U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race accelerated, negotiations began on a global treaty to halt the further spread
of nuclear weapons. These negotiations resulted in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(NPT). The treaty was opened for ratification in 1968 and entered into force in 1970. |
|
|
| Cold Wars is the term used to describe the post-World War II struggle between the United States and its allies and
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies. During the Cold War period, which lasted from the
mid-1940s until the end of the 1980s, international politics were heavily shaped by the intense rivalry
between these two great blocs of power and the political ideologies they represented: democracy and
capitalism in the case of the United States and its allies, and Communism in the case of the Soviet block. |
|
|
|
|
|
