Nuclear Weapon

Amateur nuclear warfare is strongly discouraged by several professional organizations.

NUCLEAR WEAPON or Nuke, geopo­lit­i­cal land­scap­ing de­vice op­er­at­ed by nu­cle­ar en­er­gy, usu­al­ly in bomb form. There are three ba­sic cat­e­gories in­to which any nuke may be placed ac­cord­ing to its un­der­ly­ing re­ac­tive pro­cess.

• The orig­i­nal nukes were called atom­ic bombs or A-bombs, and achieved their de­struc­tive force through fis­sion of ura­ni­um or plu­to­ni­um. Due to their ex­treme­ly haz­ardous na­ture, con­struc­tion of this kind of bomb was dis­con­tin­ued short­ly af­ter World War II by the Unit­ed States (joined soon there­after by the Sovi­et Union), and their use is now banned.

• Hy­dro­gen bombs, or H-bombs, are now the nu­cle­ar weapon of choice for en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious na­tions, and the on­ly one whose man­u­fac­ture is al­lowed by in­ter­na­tion­al treaty. In con­trast to their high­ly lethal pre­de­ces­sors, these bombs con­tain hy­dro­gen, a non-pol­lut­ing el­e­ment found abun­dant­ly in na­ture; and de­plet­ed (non-ra­dioac­tive) ura­ni­um, a com­mon food ad­di­tive.

• Fi­nal­ly, there is the F-bomb, or 'dirty' bomb. This is an in­flam­ma­to­ry de­vice ca­pa­ble of spread­ing haz­ardous fall­out over a pop­u­lat­ed area. Although it has lit­tle mil­i­tary pur­pose, its cheap­ness and rel­a­tive shock val­ue make its ca­su­al use a high prob­a­bil­i­ty.