No issue has greater urgency and urgent need than ensuring that weapons of mass destruction will never be detonated in anger or, possibly worse, by accident.
Aug. 6 Eighty years ago today, the first of two atom bombs was used in anger. Hiroshima was vaporized. But one plane, one bomb, destroying a city was inconceivable.
The Japanese now could understand how massive B-29 raids could kill hundreds of thousands of people in Tokyo or Nagoya in a single night.
It took a second B-29 and a second bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later to shock and awe Japan into abandoning its insistence on suicidal resistance and surrender unconditionally to the allies.
Then came the H-bomb and thermonuclear weapons. The explosive power of nuclear weapons is measured in thousands of tons of TNT equivalents or kilotons, or KT. Thermonuclear weapons are measured in million-ton equivalents of TNT, or MT,
While at one time it was feasible to consider the tactical use of nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons present an existential threat not to a city, but to society.
The reason for restraint is evident. For the first time in history, no winners and only losers would emerge from a thermonuclear war. Thus, since 1945, no nuclear weapon has been used in combat, war or as a «demonstration» shot in a crisis.
And those who possess these weapons have not spread to many dozens as was once feared. Today ,there are 10 nuclear weapons states — the United States, Russia, Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and, of course, Russia.
Questions of nuclear safety and security, proliferation and terrorists or others seeking to do grave harm by acquiring them remain as pertinent as they were since these hugely destructive weapons were invented.
