Pros And Cons Of Nuclear Weapons

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Nuclear weapons, do they provide peace or war? Well first off lets talk about them. October 1939, after the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the president of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt received a letter from a physicist named Albert Einstein and his colleague, Leo Szilard telling news of a bomb with unprecendented power that could be made by tapping the forces of nuclear fission. They also feared that Hitler of Germany was already working on the problem and solution. If the Germans were to be the first to develop such a devastating weapon Hitler would have access to a weapon that could destroy his enemies and rule the world. To avoid such a nightmare, Einstein and Szilard urged the goverment to join the race for nuclear weapons. Roosevelt agreed, for the next four and half years a vast top secret effort was launched in cooperation with the United Kingdom, code-named "the manhattan project" the effort eventually employed 200,000 …show more content…

The potential threat of the Nazi nuclear weapons no longer existed. But the War in the Pacific was still raging with fire, the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman decided to use the atomic bomb in order to force the Japanese leadership to surrender as quickly as possible. August 6, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima instantly killing 70,000 people, with another 70,000 deaths registered by the end of 1945, the bomb had an explosive force of 12.5 kilotons of TNT... August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagaski. This explosion produced a higher yield of 22 kilotons of TNT but caused fewer instant deaths, however many of the survivors suffered from heavy burns, radiation sickness, etc..., and the deaths continued to rise. By the end of the year more then 70,000 Nagaski's citizens lost their lives. Five years later, as many as 340,000 people, or 54 percent of the original population, had been wiped out from the two