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Articles Tagged Cold War

5 articles tagged  “Cold War”.

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A Pershing II intermediate-range ballistic missile launches during a test in 1983 — the weapon whose European deployment convinced Soviet leadership that a NATO first strike was imminent

Able Archer 83: The 1983 Nuclear War Scare Explained

Able Archer 83 was a NATO drill in November 1983 that Moscow misread as a first strike, pushing Cold War tensions to their most dangerous point.

HistoryNuclear Risk
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — the organization that sets the Doomsday Clock each year since 1947

Doomsday Clock History: Every Setting From 1947 to 2025

Doomsday Clock history year by year: from 7 minutes to midnight in 1947 to 89 seconds in 2025. Full timeline of every setting, what changed, and why it matters.

Doomsday ClockHistory
Composite photograph of the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima (left, August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (right, August 9, 1945) — the only two uses of nuclear weapons in warfare in human history

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: What Happened When the Bombs Fell

On August 6 and 9, 1945, U.S. atomic bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here is what happened, who died, and what radiation did after.

HistoryNuclear Weapons
The Trinity test fireball, photographed approximately 0.016 seconds after detonation on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert — the first nuclear explosion in human history

Manhattan Project: How Oppenheimer Built the Atomic Bomb

The Manhattan Project built the first nuclear weapons from 1942 to 1945. Follow the path from Einstein's warning letter to Trinity and Hiroshima.

HistoryNuclear Weapons
The mushroom cloud from the Tsar Bomba test on October 30, 1961, over Novaya Zemlya in the Soviet Arctic. The cloud rose to approximately 67 km (42 miles) altitude — well into the mesosphere

Tsar Bomba: The Biggest Nuclear Weapon Ever Tested

Tsar Bomba, tested by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961, yielded about 57 megatons, becoming the most powerful man-made explosion ever recorded.

HistoryNuclear Weapons

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