On the anniversary of the US nuclear bomb attack on Nagasaki in 1945, rhetoric from both Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump has one again raised the spectre of nuclear war in the Pacific. Back in 1953 as the Korean War drew to an end, the US President Dwight Eisenhower drew up detailed plans to use nuclear weapons – if deemed necessary – reversing the previous US administration’s determination not to use them. The talk of attacking Guam – which is home to some 160,000 civilians, including the indigenous Chamorros, and is one of the US military’s most strategic bases with submarines, fighter jets, bombers, missiles (including the terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) battery), ships and ordnance along with thousands of troops including US Marines – has escalated the already dangerous situation.
Nuclear weapons have not been used in conflict since the end of World War II – although many have been exploded as part of weapons development and testing programmes. They are qualitatively different from other weapons. Because the energy in the atomic nucleus is much larger than the energy in chemical bonds, nuclear explosions have far greater impacts than conventional explosives. This is why one nuclear bomb could destroy a city such as Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1945. Since then nuclear weapons have become more sophisticated and have been designed with even greater explosive power. One warhead could obliterate hundreds of thousands of people in a single explosion.
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