The Nuclear Arms Race
Once the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was
assumed that the nuclear arms race was inevitable, it was just
unavoidable that all the other major powers would develop nukes.
At the end of the war, Canada and the U.K requested a meeting to discuss
what would be done about nuclear weapons. Surprisingly U.S was open to
these discussions as they realized that they wouldn’t be the only nation
with nuclear weapons for long. They offered to decommission all their
nuclear weapons of other nations would pledge to never make them.
This was Brauch plan, it proposed that an international body would
control all radioactive materials on earth, from mining to refining to
using these materials for peaceful purposes as a nuclear power
generation. But Soviets rejected the proposal as it was just seen as
another ploy from U.S. to maintain American nuclear dominance and hence
the global nuclear arms race began.
To develop new nuclear weapons required extensive testing and most of it
was done in remote places like the Arctic or the South Pacific Islands.
Radioactive products from the tests blew across the country and many
people started to feel the adverse effects from it, further when the
nuclear research advanced to thermos nuclear weapons which were
exponentially more powerful than the first atomic bomb the radiation
spread from it was also seen to be a lot more than expected and
casualties from the nuclear weapons started to appear even before the
weapons were used, Annihilation of any life on earth was being brought
within the range of technical possibility. These events triggered public
outcry against nuclear testing.