Biological warfare
Biological weapons are living organisms or replicating entities that reproduce or replicate within their host victims. Entomological warfare is considered a type of biological weapon. None of these are conventional weapons, which are deployed primarily for their explosive, Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some of the weapons, biological weapons may be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual and they may be developed, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as midspectrum agents. Unlike bioweapons, these agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods. Offensive biological warfare, including production and use of biological weapons, was outlawed by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
Many countries, including signatories of the BWC, currently pursue research into the defense or protection against BW, a nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms on which other nations or groups interact with it. Therefore, biological agents may be useful as strategic deterrents in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield. As a tactical weapon for use, a significant problem with a BW attack is that it would take days to be effective. Some biological agents have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolized respiratory droplets and this feature can be undesirable, as the agent may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. While containment of BW is less of a concern for criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military. Rudimentary forms of warfare have been practiced since antiquity. During the 6th century BC, the Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with a fungus that would render the enemy delirious, in 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa.
Specialists disagree over whether this operation may have been responsible for the spread of the Black Death into Europe, the British Army used smallpox against Native Americans during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763. An outbreak that left as many as one hundred Native Americans dead in Ohio Country was reported in 1764, the spread of the disease weakened the natives resistance to the British troops led by Henry Bouquet. It is not clear, whether the smallpox was a result of the Fort Pitt incident or the virus was present among the Delaware people
Military deception
Military deception refers to attempts to mislead enemy forces during warfare. This is usually achieved by creating or amplifying an artificial fog of war via psychological operations, information warfare, visual deception, as a form of strategic use of information, it overlaps with psychological warfare. To the degree that any enemy that falls for the deception will lose confidence when it is revealed, deception in warfare dates back to early history. The Art of War, an ancient Chinese military treatise, puts emphasis on the tactic. In modern times military deception has developed as a fully fledged doctrine and visual deception were employed during World War I and came into even greater prominence during World War II. In the buildup to the 1944 invasion of Normandy the Allies executed one of the largest deceptions in military history, Operation Bodyguard, military deception may take both strategic and tactical forms. Deception across a battlefield was uncommon until the modern age. In a practical sense military deception employs visual misdirection, the use of military camouflage, especially on a large scale, is a form of deception.
The Russian loanword maskirovka is used to describe the Soviet Union and Russias military doctrine of surprise through deception, fictional units Creating entirely fictional forces or exaggerating the size of an army. Smoke screen A tactical deception involving smoke, fog, or other forms of concealment to hide battlefield movements, Trojan horse Gaining admittance to a fortified area under false pretences, to admit a larger attacking force. Strategic envelopment A small force distracts the enemy while a larger force moves to attack from the rear. Deception has been a part of warfare from the dawn of history, at first it fell to individual commanders to develop tactical deception on the battlefield. It was not until the era that deception was organised at a high strategic level. Early examples of military deception exist in the ancient dynasties of Egypt and China, widely recognised as one of the finest military commanders in history, made extensive use of deception in his campaigns. The Ancient Greeks were noted for several forms of tactical deception and they certainly invented smoke screens during the Peloponnesian War and stories refer to the famous Trojan horse which allowed them to defeat Troy.
In his 52 BC conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar successfully used tactical deception to achieve a crossing of the Allier river and his opponent, shadowed Caesars force from the opposite bank, contesting any attempted crossing. Caesar camped overnight in a wood, when departing the day he left a third of his force behind. Once the coast was clear, the hidden forces rebuilt a smashed crossing, one volume of Roman aristocrat Frontinuss Stratagems, written in the first century AD, deals entirely with deception
Psychological warfare
The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people. Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audiences value system, belief system, motives, reasoning, or behavior. It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originators objectives and it is used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops psychological states. Target audiences can be governments, organizations and individuals, civilians of foreign territories can be targeted by technology and media so as to cause an effect in the government of their country. In Propaganda, The Formation of Mens Attitudes, Jacques Ellul discusses psychological warfare as a peace policy practice between nations as a form of indirect aggression. This type of propaganda drains the public opinion of a regime by stripping away its power on public opinion.
This form of aggression is hard to defend against because no court of justice is capable of protecting against psychological aggression since it cannot be legally adjudicated. Here the propagandists is dealing with an adversary whose morale he seeks to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs. Since prehistoric times and chiefs have recognised the importance of inducing psychological terror in opponents, facing armies would shout, hurl insults at each other and beat weapons together or on shields prior to an engagement, all designed to intimidate the enemy. Massacres and other atrocities were certainly first employed at this time to subdue enemy or rebellious populations or induce an enemy to abandon their struggle, alexander left some of his men behind in each conquered city to introduce Greek culture and oppress dissident views. His soldiers were paid dowries to marry locals in an effort to encourage assimilation, genghis Khan, leader of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century AD employed less subtle techniques.
Defeating the will of the enemy before having to attack and reaching a settlement was preferable to actually fighting. The Mongol generals demanded submission to the Khan, and threatened the initially captured villages with complete destruction if they refused to surrender, if they had to fight to take the settlement, the Mongol generals fulfilled their threats and massacred the survivors. Tales of the encroaching horde spread to the villages and created an aura of insecurity that undermined the possibility of future resistance. The Khan employed tactics that made his numbers seem greater than actually were. During night operations he ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk to give the illusion of an army and deceive and intimidate enemy scouts. He sometimes had objects tied to the tails of his horses, so that riding on open and his soldiers used arrows specially notched to whistle as they flew through the air, creating a terrifying noise. Another tactic favoured by the Mongols was catapulting severed human heads over city walls to frighten the inhabitants and this was especially used by the Turko-Mongol chieftain
Naval warfare
Naval warfare is combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other major body of water such as a large lake or wide river. Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years, even in the interior of large landmasses, transportation before the advent of extensive railroads was largely dependent upon rivers and other navigable waterways. Prior to 1750, materials largely moved by barge or sea vessels. Thus armies, with their exorbitant needs for food, the oceanic influences throughout pre-recorded history, and classical works such as The Odyssey underscore the past influences. The Persian Empire – united and strong – could not prevail against the might of the Athenian fleet combined with that of city states in several attempts to conquer the Greek city states. Phoenicias and Egypts power and even Romes largely depended upon control of the seas, so too did the Venetian Republic dominate Italys city states, thwart the Ottoman Empire, and dominate commerce on the Silk Road and the Mediterranean in general for centuries.
For three centuries, the Northmen raided and pillaged and went where they willed, far into central Russia and the Ukraine, many sea battles through history provide a reliable source of shipwrecks for underwater archaeology. A major example is the exploration of the wrecks of various warships in the Pacific Ocean, the first dateable recorded sea battle occurred about 1210 BC, Suppiluliuma II, king of the Hittites, defeated a fleet from Cyprus, and burned their ships at sea. In the Battle of the Delta, the Ancient Egyptians defeated the Sea Peoples in a sea battle circa 1175 BC, no written mention of strategy or tactics seems to have survived. Josephus Flavius reports a battle between Tyre and the king of Assyria who was aided by the other cities in Phoenicia. The battle took place off the shores of Tyre, although the Tyrian fleet was much smaller in size, the Tyrians defeated their enemies. The Greeks of Homer just used their ships as transport for land armies and it seems unlikely that all this was the product of a single mind or even of a generation, most likely the period of evolution and experimentation was simply not recorded by history.
After some initial battles while subjugating the Greeks of the Ionian coast, the Persians determined to invade Greece proper. The first Persian campaign, in 492 BC, was aborted because the fleet was lost in a storm, attacks by the Greek armies repulsed these. The third Persian campaign in 480 BC, under Xerxes I of Persia, but the defeat on land at Thermopylae forced a Greek withdrawal, and Athens evacuated its population to nearby Salamis Island. The ensuing Battle of Salamis was one of the engagements of history. Themistocles trapped the Persians in a too narrow for them to bring their greater numbers to bear. Aeschylus wrote a play about the defeat, The Persians, which was performed in a Greek theatre competition a few years after the battle and it is the oldest known surviving play
Infantry
Infantry is the general branch of an army that engages in military combat on foot. As the troops who engage with the enemy in close-ranged combat, infantry units bear the largest brunt of warfare, Infantry can enter and maneuver in terrain that is inaccessible to military vehicles and employ crew-served infantry weapons that provide greater and more sustained firepower. In English, the 16th-century term Infantry describes soldiers who walk to the battlefield, and there engage, the term arose in Sixteenth-Century Spain, which boasted one of the first professional standing armies seen in Europe since the days of Rome. It was common to appoint royal princes to military commands, and the men under them became known as Infanteria. in the Canadian Army, the role of the infantry is to close with, and destroy the enemy. In the U. S. Army, the closes with the enemy, by means of fire and maneuver, in order to destroy or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat. In the U. S. Marine Corps, the role of the infantry is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy fire and maneuver.
Beginning with the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, artillery has become a dominant force on the battlefield. Since World War I, combat aircraft and armoured vehicles have become dominant. In 20th and 21st century warfare, infantry functions most effectively as part of a combined arms team including artillery, Infantry relies on organized formations to be employed in battle. These have evolved over time, but remain a key element to effective infantry development and deployment, until the end of the 19th century, infantry units were for the most part employed in close formations up until contact with the enemy. This allowed commanders to control of the unit, especially while maneuvering. The development of guns and other weapons with increased firepower forced infantry units to disperse in order to make them less vulnerable to such weapons. This decentralization of command was made possible by improved communications equipment, among the various subtypes of infantry is Medium infantry.
This refers to infantry which are heavily armed and armored than heavy infantry. In the early period, medium infantry were largely eliminated due to discontinued use of body armour up until the 20th century. In the United States Army, Stryker Infantry is considered Medium Infantry, since they are heavier than light infantry, Infantry doctrine is the concise expression of how infantry forces contribute to campaigns, major operations and engagements. It is a guide to action, not a set of hard, doctrine provides a very common frame of reference across the military forces, allowing the infantry to function cooperatively in what are now called combined arms operations. Doctrine helps standardise operations, facilitating readiness by establishing common ways of accomplishing infantry tasks, doctrine links theory, history and practice
Medieval warfare
Medieval warfare is the European warfare of the Middle Ages. Technological and social developments had forced a dramatic transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics, in terms of fortification, the Middle Ages saw the emergence of the castle in Europe, which spread to Western Asia. Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus wrote De re militari possibly in the late 4th century, described by historian Walter Goffart as the bible of warfare throughout the Middle Ages, De re militari was widely distributed through the Latin West. While Western Europe relied on a text for the basis of its military knowledge. According to Vegetius, infantry was the most important element of an army because it was compared to cavalry. One of the tenets he put forward was that a general should only engage in battle when he was sure of victory or had no other choice, as archaeologist Robert Liddiard explains, Pitched battles, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were rare.
Historian Michael Clanchy noted the medieval axiom that laymen are illiterate and its converse that clergy are literate, so it may be the case that few soldiers read Vegetius work. While it is uncertain to what extent his work was read by the class as opposed to the clergy. In Europe, breakdowns in centralized power led to the rise of a number of groups that turned to large-scale pillage as a source of income, most notably the Vikings raided significantly. As these groups were small and needed to move quickly, building fortifications was a good way to provide refuge and protection for the people. These fortifications evolved over the course of the Middle Ages, the most important form being the castle, the castle served as a protected place for the local elites. Fortifications were an important part of warfare because they provided safety to the lord, his family. They provided refuge from armies too large to face in open battle, the ability of the heavy cavalry to dominate a battle on an open field was useless against fortifications.
Building siege engines was a process, and could seldom be effectively done without preparations before the campaign. Many sieges could take months, if not years, to weaken or demoralize the defenders sufficiently, Siege techniques included mining in which tunnels were dug under a section of the wall and rapidly collapsed to destabilize the walls foundation. A final technique was to bore into the walls, however this was not nearly as effective as other methods due to the thickness of castle walls. Several of these techniques were used by the Romans but experienced a rebirth during the Crusades. Advances in the prosecution of sieges encouraged the development of a variety of defensive counter-measures, arrow slits, concealed doors for sallies, and deep water wells were integral to resisting siege at this time
Guerrilla warfare
The term, the diminutive form of war in Spanish, is usually translated as little war, and the word, has been used to refer to the concept since the 18th century, and perhaps earlier. In correct Spanish usage, a person who is a member of a guerrilla is a guerrillero if male, the term guerrilla was used in English as early as 1809, to refer to the fighters, and to denote a group or band of such fighters. However, in most languages guerrilla still denotes the style of warfare. The use of the diminutive evokes the differences in number, guerrillas usually carries positive connotations, and is often used by such fighters themselves and by their sympathizers, while their foes in many cases call them terrorists. Making an objective definition of the difference between a guerrilla and a terrorist has proven a difficult task, the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a larger, more unwieldy one. The Guerrilla focuses on organizing in small units, depending on the support of the local population, the guerrilla army would avoid any confrontation with large units of enemy troops, but seek and eliminate small groups of soldiers to minimize losses and exhaust the opposing force.
Not limiting their targets to personnel, enemy resources are preferred targets. All of that is to weaken the strength, to cause the enemy eventually to be unable to prosecute the war any longer. It is often misunderstood that guerrilla warfare must involve disguising as civilians to cause enemy troops to fail in telling friend from foe, this is not a primary feature of a guerrilla war. This type of war can be practiced anywhere there are places for combatants to cover themselves, at least one author credits the ancient Chinese work The Art of War with providing instruction in such tactics to Mao. The Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, in his The Art of War or 600 BC to 501 BC, was the earliest to propose the use of guerrilla warfare and this directly inspired the development of modern guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla tactics were employed by prehistoric tribal warriors against enemy tribes. Evidence of conventional warfare, on the hand, did not emerge until 3100 BC in Egypt. Since the Enlightenment, ideologies such as nationalism, socialism, because of the innovative tactics he used during his command, he made himself the name of Terror Romanorum. A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency operation involves actions taken by the government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it.
Counter-insurgency operations are common during war and armed rebellions, the two most influential of scholars of counter-insurgency have been Westerners whose job it had been to fight insurgents. Robert Thompson fought during the Malayan Emergency and David Galula fought during the Algerian War, together these officers advocated multi-pronged strategies to win over the civilian population to the side of the counter-insurgent. The widely distributed and influential work of Sir Robert Thompson, counter-insurgency expert of the Malayan Emergency, thompsons underlying assumption was that the counter-insurgent was committed to improving the rule of law and bettering local governance
War
War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression and mortality, an absence of war is usually called peace. Warfare refers to the activities and characteristics of types of war. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to legitimate military targets. While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, as concerns a belligerents losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in modern history may have been the Paraguayan War. In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990, in 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth biggest problem facing humanity for the next fifty years. Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, the word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, and “to bring into confusion”. In German, the equivalent is Krieg, the Spanish, the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning war, and -logy, meaning the study of.
Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, asymmetric warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military capability or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a weapon was principally used during World War I. Civil war is a war between forces belonging to the nation or political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment, cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nations information systems. Information warfare is the application of force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which weapons are the primary, or a major.
War of aggression is a war for conquest or gain rather than self-defense, the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare
Early modern warfare
This entire period is contained within the Age of Sail, which characteristic dominated the eras naval tactics, including the use of gunpowder in naval artillery. In the Horn of Africa, the Adals conquest of Ethiopia and the involving of the Ottomans, the earliest surviving bronze hand cannon, dates to 1288, during the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty of China. Gunpowder warfare was used in the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281, Japanese scrolls contain illustrations of bombs used by the Yuan-Mongol forces against mounted samurai. In 1326 the earliest known European picture of a gun appeared in a manuscript by Walter de Milemete, in 1350, Petrarch wrote that the presence of cannons on the battlefield was as common and familiar as other kinds of arms. Early artillery played a role in the 100 Years War. The period from 1500–1801 saw an advance in techniques of fortification in Europe. Whereas medieval castles had relied on high walls to keep out attackers, to do this, engineers developed a style of fortress known as the trace italienne or Italian style.
These had low, sloping walls, that would absorb or glance off cannon fire. In addition, they were shaped like stars, with bastions protruding at sharp angles, the reason for this was to ensure that every bastion could be supported with fire from an adjacent bastion, leaving no dead ground for an attacker to take cover in. These new fortifications quickly negated the advantages cannon had offered to besiegers, a polygonal fort is a fortification in the style that evolved around the middle of the 18th century, in response to the development of explosive shells. The polygonal style of fortification is described as a flankless fort. Many such forts were built in the United Kingdom and the British Empire during the government of Lord Palmerston and their low profile makes them easy to overlook. In response to the vulnerabilities of star forts, military engineers evolved a much simpler but more robust style of fortification. An example of style can be seen at Fort McHenry in Baltimore in the United States of America.
The power of aristocracies vis à vis states diminished throughout Western Europe during this period, aristocrats 200- to 400-year-old ancestral castles no longer provided useful defences against artillery. The nobilitys importance in warfare eroded as medieval heavy cavalry lost its role in battle. The heavy cavalry - made up of armored knights - had begun to fade in importance in the Late Middle Ages, the English longbow and the Swiss pike had both proven their ability to devastate larger armed forces of mounted knights. However, the use of the longbow required a lifetime of training, making it impossible to amass very large forces of archers
Trench warfare
The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I. It has become a byword for stalemate, sieges, Trench warfare occurred when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. On the Western Front in 1914–18, both sides constructed elaborate trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire, the area between opposing trench lines was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties, with the development of armoured warfare, emphasis on trench warfare has declined, but still occurs where battle-lines become static. Field works are as old as armies, Roman legions, when in the presence of an enemy, entrenched camps nightly when on the move. In the early modern era they were used to block possible lines of advance and they played a pivotal role in manoeuvring that took place before the Battle of Blenheim.
The lines were captured by the French in 1707 and demolished, the French built the 19-kilometre-long Lines of Weissenburg during the War of the Spanish Succession under the orders of the Duke of Villars in 1706. These were to remain in existence for just over 100 years and were last manned during Napoleons Hundred Days, the French built the Lines of Ne Plus Ultra during the winter of 1710–1711, which have been compared to the trenches of World War I. They ran from Arras to Cambrai and Valenciennes where they linked up with existing defensive lines fronted by the river Sambre and they were breached in the 1711 campaign season by the Duke of Marlborough through a magnificent piece of manoeuvring. During the Peninsular War, the British and Portuguese constructed the Lines of Torres Vedras in 1809 and 1810, nor were fortifications restricted to European powers. British casualty rates of up to 45 percent, such as at the Battle of Ohaeawai in 1845, proved contemporary firepower was insufficient to dislodge defenders from a trench system.
Fundamentally, as the range and rate of fire of rifled small arms increased and this was only made more lethal by the introduction of rapid-firing artillery, exemplified by the French 75, and high explosive fragmentation rounds. The increases in firepower had outstripped the ability of infantry to cover the ground between firing lines, and the ability of armour to withstand fire and it would take a revolution in mobility to change that. Trench warfare is associated with the First World War of 1914–18. Both sides concentrated on breaking up attacks and on protecting their own troops by digging deep into the ground. Trench warfare was conducted on other fronts, including Italy. Trench warfare has become a symbol of the futility of war. To the French, the equivalent is the attrition of the Battle of Verdun in which the French Army suffered 380,000 casualties, Trench warfare is associated with mass slaughter in appalling conditions
Military tactics
Military tactics are the science and art of organizing a military force, and the techniques for combining and using weapons and military units to engage and defeat an enemy in battle. Changes in philosophy and technology have been reflected in changes to military tactics, in contemporary military science, tactics are the lowest of three planning levels, strategic and tactical. The highest level of planning is strategy, how force is translated into political objectives by bridging the means, the intermediate level, the conversion of strategy into tactics, deals with formations of units. Military tactics answer the questions of how best to deploy and employ forces on a small scale, some practices have not changed since the dawn of warfare, ambushes, turning flanks, reconnaissance and using obstacles and defenses, etc. Using ground to best advantage has not changed much either, rivers, passes, choke points, and natural cover, can all be used in multiple ways. Before the nineteenth century, many tactics were confined to battlefield concerns.
Nowadays, specialized tactics exist for many situations, for example for securing a room in a building, technological changes can render existing tactics obsolete, and sociological changes can shift the goals and methods of warfare, requiring new tactics. Tactics define how soldiers are armed and trained, each – constrained by his weaponry and social conditioning – would use a battlefield differently, but would usually seek the same outcomes from their use of tactics. The First World War forced great changes in tactics as advances in technology rendered prior tactics useless, list of military tactics Combat arms Johnson, Michael Whitby, John France. How to win on the battlefield,25 key tactics to outwit, outflank, cS1 maint, Multiple names, authors list Muhm, Gerhard. German Tactics in the Italian Campaign, Gerhard Muhm, La Tattica nella campagna ass d’Italia, in LINEA GOTICA AVAMPOSTO DEI BALCANI, Amedeo Montemaggi - Edizioni Civitas, Roma 1993. Contemporary Marine tactics for war fighting Napoleons tactics and strategy Small Unit Actions during German Campaign in Russia
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is used to inflict damage on the enemy. In contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time-frame, some activists had claimed in the 1980s that with this potential nuclear winter side-effect of a nuclear war, almost every human on Earth could starve to death. So far, two nuclear weapons have been used in the course of warfare, both by the United States near the end of World War II, on August 6,1945, a uranium gun-type device was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, a plutonium device was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. These two bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 120,000 people, in 1974, and in 1998, two countries that were openly hostile toward each other, developed nuclear weapons. Israel and North Korea are thought to have developed stocks of nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, although it is known to have constructed the reactor and reprocessing plant necessary for building nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons have been detonated on over 2,000 occasions for testing purposes, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the resultant end of the Cold War, the threat of a major nuclear war between the two nuclear superpowers was generally thought to have declined. Since then, concern over nuclear weapons has shifted to the prevention of localized nuclear conflicts resulting from nuclear proliferation, the possibility of using nuclear weapons in war is usually divided into two subgroups, each with different effects and potentially fought with different types of nuclear armaments. The first, a nuclear war, refers to a small-scale use of nuclear weapons by two belligerents. This term could apply to any use of nuclear weapons that may involve military or civilian targets. The second, a nuclear war, could consist of large numbers of nuclear weapons used in an attack aimed at an entire country, including military, economic. Such an attack would almost certainly destroy the economic and military infrastructure of the target nation.
Some Cold War strategists such as Henry Kissinger argued that a nuclear war could be possible between two heavily armed superpowers. Some predict, that a war could potentially escalate into a full-scale nuclear war. Even the most optimistic predictions of the effects of a nuclear exchange foresee the death of many millions of victims within a very short period of time. However, such predictions, assuming total war with nuclear arsenals at Cold War highs, have not been without criticism. The authors of the study estimated that as much as five tons of soot could be released, producing a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America. The cooling would last for years and could be catastrophic, according to the researchers, either a limited or full-scale nuclear exchange could occur during an accidental nuclear war, in which the use of nuclear weapons is triggered unintentionally
