In the 1940s we were rushing to beat out the Germans in developing an atomic bomb. The Germans had technological superiority over us in almost all areas of weaponry. We were damn lucky to win that race, when you consider how far ahead they were in every other weapon. The Germans had gathered almost all their scientists and engineers and put them into a place called Peenemünde where their cooperation with each other produced astounding results. One of the key elements needed to develop the bomb was something we called heavy water. We made sure we deprived the Germans of this by bombing and raiding the manufacturing plants.

We all know that the Japanese were the first and only people to taste the fury of the atom. What the Japanese didn't know when they surrendered was the fact that we had only a couple of nukes and we used them. It would have taken months to produce more atom bombs. After the war ended, we might have abandoned nukes as too dangerous but we didn't. A couple of years later the Soviets developed their own atom bomb, basically from plans stolen from us by spies. The Soviets had just about the best spy network the world had ever seen, it was also the biggest. Now we felt we had to build up our atomic forces, and we did. We went on to develop the Hydrogen bomb, but again the Soviets were able to get the plans and build their own.

Minuteman I - Source: U.S. Air Force

We felt that if we could build so many nuclear weapons that no one would dare attack us. But the Soviets felt the same way. At some point we and the Soviets had enough nukes to destroy the world many times over. The U.S. arsenal approached 10,000 nukes when you counted the bombs, missiles warheads, and tactical nukes. The Soviets had more. Some how we didn't blow each other up but we did come very close on a couple of occasions. Our first near miss was in 1945 when the Japanese had scheduled a dirty bomb blast for the west coast. It seems that a German sub was supposed to deliver nuclear material to them and they were going to put it into a conventional bomb creating a dirty nuclear bomb. This bomb would not produce a nuclear explosion but would spread radioactive material over many miles. We got to them first.

Then there was the Cuban Missile crisis. This was a lot worse than most people realize. What made it so bad was the fact that not only were there nuclear missiles in Cuba but the Russian troops which were there were ready to repel any invasion with tactical nukes. Castro was insisting on a nuclear strike against the U.S. and Kruschev was having a hard time controlling his commanders in Cuba. They wanted to use nuclear weapons against us. If it wasn't for the fact that Kruschev clamped down on them, we might have been the victims of a nuclear holocaust.

The pall of a nuclear attack hung over every American. Even when Sputnik was launched, people worried that it somehow was the forerunner of an unstoppable nuclear attack from space. Children were told in school that they had to duck under desks to protect themselves from attack, which we all know was ridiculous, and drills were conducted routinely in the schools. Some people became nervous wrecks from worry and their health was affected. It truly was a time of worry.

It wasn't just attacks we worried about. We worried about mistakes. God must have been looking out for us when he put Col. Stanislav Petrov in charge of a shift that was charged with verification of launches against the Soviet Union. He refused to launch a counter strike when ordered to do so. The computer in the Soviet Union had malfunctioned and had show missile launches against them, but no one knew it was a malfunction but Petrov suspected it. A close call indeed. What about all the other close calls both Soviet and American we never heard of? There must have been at least a few. Our doom was only the push of a button away.

Now we come to the present. Treaties between the U.S. and Russia mandate that we lower the amount of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. We have destroyed some and assisted the former Soviet states with their destruction of weapons. We still have thousands of nukes, and the nukes in the former Soviet Union are in danger of falling into the hands of terrorists, if some of them haven't already. Many countries are now in the nuclear club. Two enemies, Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons and the danger of a nuclear attack there is very great. Israel is known to have nukes as is France, England, South Africa, China and maybe Korea among others. I can't vouch for its accuracy but here is a list of the amount of nukes each country had as of 2002: