Why nuclear missiles are super!

When the subject of nuclear weapons is raised people always react differently. Some nod their heads and mumble bleak things about necessity. Others march in mass against them stating them to be unnecessary brutal and indiscriminate. Then there are some who feel safe, nostalgic and glad they exist. I am one of these people. It is not what they are capable of that I am a fan of. We all know they are made to murder thousands even millions of people with a single blast and the humanity in us is enraged by this. Nuclear weapons ended the bloodiest conflict in the history of the world when they were dropped on Japan. However if it were not for there existence what would the world be like today?

After the bomb was dropped the iron curtain swished shut with a flourish of backroom politics and conspiracy theories that would keep Ian Fleming and his peers in cocktails and European sports cars for centuries. Paranoia permeated peoples of both sides. Governments built themselves handsome bunkers equipped to survive the fallout of war with these weapons, as did some private individuals the so called “survivalists”. Things looked pretty grim as a man made apocalypse looked pretty plausible.

Yet the chances of a war similar to ww2 or any war before hand were ended.
The only superpowers left with the manpower for beginning world war three were the USSR, the UK and the USA. The latter two candidates had nuclear weapons and a strong allegiance already and soviet Russia, with help from captured scientists pretty soon had the world’s largest atomic arsenal.

This really made no difference because even if they did strike first, the US and UK would completely level every inch of the Soviet Union before one glorious note of Gimn Sovetskogo Soyuza could sound. It would be known as the cold war, but really it was just a grand game of chicken that both sides kept pulling out of at the last second.

So for the first time in nearly five hundred years the UK had no empire, was on the brink of no war that required vast amounts of man power and so no longer would all men of a certain age need to join the army. The welfare state was more important to the public than rule Britannia and they wanted to start bettering their own lives.

People began going crazy over the new aristocracy. Celebrities. These were common folk, it was a billion times more enchanting than the prince and the pauper story because people could see it, hear it happening. Beatle mania began making the headlines, Art became far more risqué more antiestablishment, symbols of free love and caring became synonymous with the 1960s. It was like a second renaissance all over the western world and it was all thanks to DR J. Robert Oppenheimer’s gift of nuclear arms to the world.

Basically the fear that was felt by the east and west when the considered the consequences of all out Nuclear war was what kept it from ever happening, they had too much to loose. What’s to say that if these weapons had never existed the Soviets and the capitalist US and UK would have clashed later? History. Two superpowers with complete polar opposite ideals have never survived at the same time. There have always been wars to allow only one major set of principles to influence the human race. This is exactly what would have happened if no one had had nuclear weapons at this time in history. Britain would always be in a state of war. Who with after Russia, assuming they won? China? America? Thankfully we will never have to know because as long as everyone knows everyone else has nuclear weapons, they are never going to risk a war over something like ideals.

I am a liberal and would love to be as optimistic as some who talk about world wide disarmament of these appalling weapons and imagine we would all just get along but I cannot because I am also a realist. It is in human nature to fight and the only thing that has stopped it happening on a mass scale for the last 70 years is that fear of a man made apocalypse I mentioned earlier.