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Nuclear Weapons
This category is for questions about weapons that use nuclear fission or fusion to gain explosive power.
3,869 Questions
Who invented and launched the first nuclear bomb?
Leo Szilard invented the atomic bomb in 1933, but could not build it by himself.
The US built the first atomic bombs in 1945 and dropped 2 on Japan by airplane.
No nuclear missiles have ever been launched in war.
Mostly inhalation/ingestion of alpha emitter dust particles. These offer little protection from other types of radiation sources.
Find a shelter that provides the greatest protection.
What weapons are used in the navy?
Medium calibre guns (naval artillary), missiles (anti-aircraft, anti-missile, anti-ship), close range guns (automatic - defending against missile/air attack, or manned, for policing duties against smaller craft). Small arms (rifles, pistols). Torpedos, depth charges (anti submarine). Nuclear missiles. Cruise missiles.
What types of nuclear weapons are there today?
Generally fusion weapons - that's an atomic bomb on the inside that starts a fusion reaction with the material surrounding the atomic bomb. An atomic bomb works by uranium splitting or fissioning. This produces enough energy to cause fusion of the the surrounding material - the atoms fuse or join together liberating lots of energy. The surrounding material is usually the hydrogen isotope - deuterium. However there are apparently fusion weapons that use different surrounding materials that change the nature of the fusion so that it produces huge energy in the form of high-energy neutrons.€ (neutron bomb) These destroy life but not buildings, infrastructure etc. The choice of the surrounding material affects how fast the radio-activity returns to safe levels.
- United States
- Russia
- China
- U.K.
- France
- India
- Pakistan
- Israel (unconfirmed, but everyone knows they do)
- North Korea
South Africa had them, but voluntarily gave them all up. Several former Soviet Republics had them at the breakup of the Soviet Union, but all gave them back to Russia or destroyed them within a few years (usually for some form of compensation).
United States, Russia, China,United Kingdom,France,India,Pakistan.
What weapons did highway men use?
Highwaymen often used rapiers or pistols as weapons to receive the money by robbery.
How high do nuclear missiles go?
Nuclear missiles leave the earth's atmosphere for some time. Intercontinental missiles, for example require the missile to ascend to 1,000 feet to assure that it will reach it's intended target.
Did Iraq have nuclear weapons?
Saddam Hussein had the materials necessary to build nuclear weapons - the invasion prevented him from attaining the proper machines necessary to complete weapons manufacturing.
Just this past summer, it was learned that in the early days of the Iraq war, US forces seized 55 tons of Uranium yellowcake, a low-grade ore. While not suitable for weapons, it can be enriched by using a centrifuge of certain capability. Centrifuges to enrich the yellowcake to weapons-grade nuclear material wasn't obtained by Iraq, though had the invasion not happened it would've happened eventually.
The yellowcake was guarded by US forces from the beginning of the war until this past summer, when a deal was reached with Canada (with the agreement of the new Iraqi government) to sell the Uranium and get it out of the country. The reason that it had been closely guarded and a secret is that neighboring Iran DOES have the kinds of centrifuges to enrich material to weapons grade. It would have been a major disaster had that material found its way into terrorist hands.
Whether he was able to procure tactical nukes or those of smaller design is not known publicly; such information is rarely released to the public, even if politically advantageous to do so. However, since the US and other countries have the ability to find nuclear weapons by a variety of classified means, it's a safe bet that if he did, they're gone now, either found by Coalition forces or moved out of the country to a neighboring Arab state.
Why was nuclear weapons important in World War II and the cold war?
I'll answer the World War 2 part. Someone else can improve this answer for the Cold War part.
Actually, there weren't any nuclear weapons used in World War 2. Atomic weapons, yes, nuclear, no. I'm not really sure what difference it makes. Anyway, two bombs were dropped at Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the very end of World War 2 on Japan because the Japanese were essentially making their islands into huge forts and if they tried to invade the islands manually, they projected it would have cost millions of Americans' lives. So the US dropped two bombs. After the first one, Japan was scared, but they thought the US only had one, so they didn't surrender. When they dropped a second, the US said, "Hey Japan! We got a ton of these bombs and we're gonna blow you away!" --even though the US only had 2 at the time. Anyway, Japan surrendered and the Allies officially won World War 2.
Why were nuclear weapons important in the cold war and world war 2?
Nuclear weapons were clearly important during WW2 simply due to the fact that several nations were in the developmental stages of producing such a weapon but no one had actually been successful until the Manhattan Project prevailed in the United States. Having a weapon of such destruction meant that a nation could do the damage that thousands of lives, millions of dollars, and years of warfare could not do in traditional, conventional war. The bottom line is that whoever possessed the bomb was going to control world affairs because no nation wanted to become a victim of such instant death and destruction. Nuclear weapons became even more important in the Cold War because the two standing powers (America & The Soviet Union) had quite different viewpoints on how world affairs should be treated. Germany was split into two after the war whereby the Americans and its allies controlled West Germany and the Soviets controlled East Germany. Since America was greatly outnumbered by Soviet forces and couldn't keep its entire Army in Europe, they deployed nuclear weapons in Europe to deter Soviet forces from invading West Germany and advancing its empire and will upon weaker European nations. The whole idea behind having nuclear weapons is to exact fear into the enemy. The fear to attack is the desired outcome of possessing nuclear weapons and those who have them are taken seriously and have considerable increased presence at a negotiating table.
How many nuclear weapons are in China?
12, 250 China has the 2nd largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
How many countries have tested nuclear missiles?
Rarely are missiles tested with actual nuclear warheads. It would be utter foolishness and very dangerous to do so before the missile was tested and proven reliable first. The warhead(s) are usually replaced with radio telemetry devices or a satellite, during development testing of the missile, to verify its performance and reliability. This makes it very easy to codevelop a peaceful rocket for launching spacecraft and a military ICBM in the same project, if you already have or are developing nuclear explosives.
Just think of the warheads the US could have put on Apollo Project type Saturn-IB boosters had we so chosen to use them as ICBMs!
Does Jr the third nuclear bomb exist?
No. It's entirely fictional, though the book it appears in is written in a style intended to make it appear as if it were real (it's somewhat similar to some of Michael Crichton's works - The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Prey, for example - in that respect).
The third nuclear bomb was "Fat Man", the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
The second and first were "Little Boy" and "The Gadget", respectively. Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, and the Gadget was the device used in the Trinity Test.
After Fat Man was detonated, the US had no remaining atomic bombs in stock, though some effort was made to make the Japanese government believe that they did. Obviously more could have been made (and would have been, had the Japanese government not surrendered), but it would have probably taken a few weeks.
The fourth nuclear bomb (never named) was assembled by Los Alamos and in San Francisco for shipment by air to Tinnian on August 18, 1945 (4 days after Japan surrendered, so it was returned to Los Alamos). It probably could have been dropped between August 25 and August 29, had Japan not surrendered.
The US had an additional 20 bombs in various stages of fabrication scheduled to be completed and dropped on Japan in 1945, if needed: 3 in September, 3 in October, 7 in November, and 7 in December. The increase in production rate in November was due to a planned change from pure Plutonium-239 cores to composite Plutonium-239/Uranium-235 cores.
Except for the MK-1 Little Boy gun bomb all other nuclear bombs in 1945 were MK-3 "Fat Man" style implosion bombs.
Source: Swords of Armageddon by Chuck Hanson (Classified documents obtained via FOIA).
First nuclear explosion in India made by whoom?
This was on May 18 1974, the man in charge was Raja Ramanna.
See Wikipedia 'Smiling Buddha' - a misnomer if ever there was.
Why were nuclear weapons designed?
to attck the countries that hurt the u.s , such as hiroshima. even though they are very destructive.
