Mass Destruction

Nuclear weapons derive their explosive power from the fission (splitting) and fusion (combining) of atoms. Fusion devices need to be combined with a nuclear fission weapon to generate the intense heat necessary to begin the still more powerful process of fusion. Fusion weapons—the ‘H’ (hydrogen) bomb—can be a thousand times more powerful than fission weapons and these opened the horrific possibility of global destruction through nuclear missile war. Many early ‘fusion’ weapons were in fact ‘boosted fission devices’, gaining most of their power from the fission explosion with a fusion component to enhance its efficiency. Military requirements have also led to enhanced radiation/reduced blast weapons, the so-called ‘neutron bomb’, in which the immediate radiation is multiplied in order to kill troops rather than destroy installations.A number of ‘third-generation nuclear weapons’ are under development in the USA and Russia, however. These include diverting the rays from a nuclear explosion and pumping it out in a beam, or very low-yield nuclear weapons to destroy missiles or electronics with radiation alone. Over the past half-century, nuclear weapons have had enormous influence on the design of conventional military forces. But, apart from the two bombs on Japan which ended WW II, they were seen as too terrible to use.