the arms race

    Cards (7)

    • on 29th of August 1949 the USSR tested their first atomic bomb, this meant the US no longer were the only ones with nuclear weapons and had lost a huge political advantage
    • the American government scrambled to one up the USSR and started the development of the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb
    • over the following decade the two superpowers continued to build up their nuclear arsenals. In November 1952 the USA tested their first hydrogen bomb and the Soviet Union followed suit in October 1953
    • on the 30th of October 1961 the Soviets detonated the largest bomb the world had ever seen, the explosion was more than all the explosives used in WW2 combined
    • MAD (mutually assured destruction) meant that neither side fired eachother. In theory as long as long as both sides had the ability to obliterate the other no one would make the first move
    • in reality MAD wasn't foolproof because it relied on communication between the leaders which could be disrupted by an attack or accidental launch
    • by the end of the cold war there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons worldwide