Why have atomic bombs?
The race to harness the power of the atom started in the World War 2. German and Allied scientists were desperate to develop the bomb, knowing that if the other side developed one first the war would be over. Fortunately, the German scientists abandoned the project near the end of the war, believing it to be impossible. The first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Things changed when Russia developed the bomb in 1949. Now Cold War enemies, Russia and America were locked in an arms race, both frantically producing thousands of warheads. However, it was only America that pursued the policy of MAD – mutually assured destruction. This effectively meant – and still does mean – allowing every American citizen to be held hostage by Russia. It means our only defence to a nuclear attack is one of our own, which does not save the lives of any of the hundreds of millions of people that would die in the strike. Russia n
