Nuclear Weapons and ways it is affecting our lives

Nuclear weapons are objects of mass destruction and the creation of it has led humans into rethinking their whole existence. The world had been through its worst from the 50's to the 90's as the US and USSR were locked into a battle with each other in proving who's ideals would survive. Fortunately the issues were solved kind of diplomatically but not by nuclear warfare. In recent times, the threat of nuclear warfare has increased as Russia is in a war with Ukraine and Russia has nuclear weapons which could be used if their existence gets threatened. And US is backing up Ukraine with supplies needed to fight for their freedom and as a result the relationship between US and Russia has soured, leading us to witness the situation that our past generations did during the cold war. 

Nuclear weapons were first invented on 1945 by the US, and 2 were used on Japan to end Word War 2. When people witnessed its destructive power at that time, they were truly frightened about what it could do to human beings, because of such huge amount of energy released from such a small amount of matter. But the creation of nukes (nuclear weapons) started to escalate once USSR got hands on how to make one. Then started the cold war between US and USSR that lasted decades and finally ended with the dissolution of USSR on 1991. Not that any of the weapons were used during this time but the number of times they were almost used is a lot. If any of those decisions made by the leaders were wrong, the world we knew would be gone and could result with our inexistence. 

I think most of us would know what nukes are and would simply guess it as a BOMB. But what truly goes on inside one is beyond imaginable to us. The minds that created it was truly ahead of their time and were given a kind of power that they weren't ready to hold upon. Nukes are basically powered by chain reactions resulting in a continuous burst of energy that lasts some seconds unleashing unimaginable amount of energy. The energy released are mostly heat, light and radiation, and the shockwave that is created by the blast. Two types of nuclear weapons exist till now, or I can say, classified till now.  The low yield ones, known as fissions bombs, the one dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, consists of Plutonium-239 or Uranium-235 as their main energy source. The fission process is started by the use of conventional explosives and the rest happens by fission chain reaction. The latter, more powerful ones are the fusion bombs or H-bombs (Hydrogen bombs), same process happens in the H-bombs just like the fissions ones and then another extra step happens. The huge energy released by the fissions materials get directed into another stage where nuclear fusion occurs which consists of Deuterium and Tritium. These two elements fuse together to produce Helium and more energy resulting in a so called mini-Sun, just like what happens inside the Sun in our solar system. 

So this is the basic knowledge about nuclear weapons and you can further imagine what they are truly capable of if you watch a video or two about them. Now, let us think about how humans have come this far without annihilating each other in their times of anger. The reason was MAD i.e. Mutually Assured Destruction. It means that if a nation launches a nuke on another nation, then the opposing country is bound to launch theirs on that nation too. So MAD results in complete destruction leaving no winners, only losers. As a result no nation has had the means to annihilate their enemy without killing themselves. But what if a nuclear nation attacks a non-nuclear nation? This is what happened mostly in the cold war, where US and USSR backed their allies with weapons and threatened each other with nuclear warheads, thus resulting in fighting within the allies but not their selves. So, we can say, hypothetically, all nuclear nations can never be friends.

In recent times, we are in a new cold war, with US backing up Ukraine and Russia backed by China mostly. This is now a fight between NATO and Russia to say exactly, and the only danger is any misunderstanding may lead into nuclear warfare. In my opinion, we civilians really can't do anything when it comes to existential crisis of a nation, worst of all if it is a nuclear one. Because the nation that has nuclear weapons in their hands will never lose without destroying another nation and that is the beauty of nuclear weapons. As a result, nuclear weapons won't go away anytime soon, so the only thing we can do is to elect sane humans into power and hope for the best.