Nuclear weapons (Alternity)

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive of weapons ever developed by mankind and can refer to fission (e.g., typical nuclear device) or the less-common fusion weapons (hydrogen bombs). The first weapon ever detonated was the United States' Trinity test in the desert of New Mexico in 1945, and two of the only nuclear weapons ever deployed in warfare were also that of the US, who utilized the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in July 1947 (the others were a pair of bombs used by the Philippines in Indochina in May 1967 on the cities of Cam Ranh and Haiphong). The best known 'war' in which nuclear weapons were heavily proliferated was the 43-year Cold War that lasted from 1948 to 1991, during which the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a mass nuclear arms race, developing a total of nearly 90,000 warheads between the two. Multiple treaties both during the Cold War and since its end six years ago have vastly reduced the nuclear arsenals of both the United States and Russia. Other nations known to possess nuclear arsenals include the Philippine Empire, Ethiopia, China, Great Britain, France, Korea, India, South Africa, West Punjab, and Israel. The Arab Islamic Republic is suspected to have a nuclear program, but so far substantial evidence to confirm these allegations is lacking, while Persia is widely known to have an active nuclear program.