Did the possession of nuclear weapons prevent war in Europe after 1945 Essay

Did the possession of nuclear weapons prevent war in Europe after 1945 - Essay Example There is no doubt that presence of nuclear programs and weapons enabled Europe to take wise decisions after 1945. The best example of European ‘wise decisions’ is no nuclear war has taken place since 1945. If we talk about the nuclear battlefield in the context of British Government, we would analyse the British Army of the Rhine spent much time and effort in trying to imagine what such a battlefield might look like and in preparing to cope with it. The main reason was that British Government was in debt to the USA, due to which it reduced its armed forced to one million soldiers. Beside this, all European countries were aware of the haphazard of nuclear war, since the bombing of ‘Hiroshima’. During the 1950s and 1960s these efforts were taken very seriously, which involved two steps: possessing advanced nuclear weapons and visualising war with and without them. Of course war cannot be fought without them, which means war fought with nuclear weapons. ‘ Hiroshima’ bombing is a sample view, which is still giving birth to the haphazard of a single nuclear bomb. In the context of war at the strategic level the first response was to emphasise ‘counterforce’. Soviet weapons were the strategic targets and senior commanders still talked as though a nuclear war could be ‘won’. Then the danger of this approach dawned with the development of Soviet Union the means of delivering a massive blow against the United States, so the notion of 'riding out' a first strike and then delivering a counter-blow on what could only be empty silos and deserted bomber bases became highly unattractive. The result was a shift back to 'city-busting', holding the people rather than the weapons as hostages; 400 one-megaton weapons able to hit area targets would suffice. This totally amoral doctrine was dressed up under the term Mutual Assured Destruction and its appropriate acronym (MAD). The tactical counterpart to this change of heart took a further five years to mature. It came to be realised that large-scale assault on NATO, while still a de adly danger, was by no means the only or even the most likely contingency. (Barnaby & Holdstock, 2003, p. 39) At that time the total nuclear stockpile of the United States, at its highest point, had an estimated explosive yield of some 9 billion tons of high explosive and the Soviet stockpile must have been much the same. In the 20 years from 1945 to 1965 nuclear warheads evolved to fill every possible ecological niche on the battlefield and in numbers far greater than any rational person could possibly have considered useful. (2003, p.

Geology Volcanoes&Earthquake Assignment2 Assignment

Geology Volcanoes&Earthquake Assignment2 - Assignment Example "Back from the Dead" depicts the magnitude of damage that a volcanic activity can cause. The movie shows the eruption of Mt. St. Helens as one of the most catastrophic events that occurred in the United States. Both movies give viewers first-hand evidence that volcanic activity can cause economic and human loss. Various things such as disruptions lead to the eruption of hot magma and lava. But those are not the major lessons learnt. People who knew the background of Mt St. Helens were shocked by the events that followed. The events that take place, as shown by both movies, reveal that mountains that occur through volcanic means can reoccur. What is interesting is that a resurgence of plant and animal life invoked the mountain out of its dormancy. Additionally, the movie increase insight regarding causes of environmental and geological shifts, forces that spur eruptions. If geologists and people in general can gain better understanding of factors behind shifts, they prediction of futu re eruptions can become easy (Dale, Swanson, and Crisafulli, 7). Fire Mountain, on the other hand, presents a firsthand experience of one of the biggest natural catastrophes to have occurred that resulted in more 540 million tons of rock and ash being thrown out into the sky. The movie is talking about the same event as Back from the Dead is, but the details and accounts presented in this movie are different from the first one. The video, packed with evolutionary partiality, does not categorically mention how the ecological or geological features came about by the Mt. St. Helens’ eruption in 1980 parallel the creationist explanations more than the evolutionary theory. However, it gives a good account of what happened, especially with its interviews with survivors, and the viewer can easily draw apparent conclusions. This movie shows how seemingly old, stratified rock can form by