Mushroom cloud from the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the

Nuclear holocaust refers to the possibility of complete or nearly complete eradication of human civilization by nuclear warfare. A Civilization is a society in which large numbers of people share a variety of common elements Under such a scenario, all or most of the Earth is destroyed and rendered uninhabitable by nuclear weapons in future world war. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. A world war is a War affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations

A common definition of the word "holocaust": "great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire. "^[1] The word is derived from the Greek term "holokaustos" meaning "completely burnt. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly " Possibly the first printed use of the word "holocaust" to describe an imagined nuclear destruction is Reginald Glossop's 1926: "Moscow . . . beneath them . . . a crash like a crack of Doom! The echoes of this Holocaust rumbled and rolled . . . a distinct smell of sulphur . . . atomic destruction. "^[2] In the 1960s the principal referent of the unmodified "holocaust" was nuclear destruction. ^[3] Since the mid 1970s the capitalized term "Holocaust" has been closely associated with the Nazi mass slaughter of Jews (see Holocaust) and "holocaust" in its nuclear destruction sense is almost always preceded by "atomic" or "nuclear". Nazism, which was a short name for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus refers primarily to the Ideology and practices of the National Socialist German PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as ^[4]

Nuclear physicists and authors have speculated that nuclear holocaust could result in an end to human life, or at least to modern civilization on Earth due to the immediate effects of nuclear fallout, the loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses, or nuclear winter and resulting extinctions. Speculative fiction is a term used as an inclusive descriptor covering a group of Fiction Genres that speculate about worlds that are unlike the real world in Fallout is the residual radiation hazard from a Nuclear explosion, so named because it "falls out" of the atmosphere into which it is spread during the explosion The term electromagnetic pulse ( EMP) has the following meanings Electromagnetic radiation from an Explosion (especially a Nuclear Nuclear winter is a term that describes the climatic effects of nuclear war. In Biology and Ecology, extinction is the cessation of existence of a Species or group of taxa.

Nuclear holocaust in popular culture

The theme is widely used in dystopian fiction books and films. A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος alternatively cacotopia, kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is the vision of a society

One of the first depictions of a nuclear holocaust is included in Olaf Stapledon's celebrated Last and First Men (1930). William Olaf Stapledon ( May 10, 1886 &ndash September 6, 1950) was a British philosopher and author of several influential works Last and First Men A Story of the Near and Far Future is a Science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. Unlike the post-1945 treatment of the subject, where the disaster is almost invariably the outcome of a war between states, Stapeldon depicts the holocaust as the result of class war between an arrogant ruling class and downtrodden miners in a future civilization. Class War was a UK Class struggle based group and Newspaper originally set up by Ian Bone and others in 1983 Mining is the extraction of valuable Minerals or other geological materials from the earth usually (but not always from an Ore body Abuse of the newly-discovered Atomic power source leads to what would now be called a chain reaction engulfing the entire world, so that "of the two hundred million members of the human race, all were burnt or roasted or suffocated - all but thirty-five, who happened to be in the neighborhood of the North Pole" (and from whom humanity is eventually regenerated for many more millions of years of existence). A chain reaction is a sequence of Reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place

Throughout the Cold War, nuclear holocaust was something many people in the developed world were afraid of because of a perceived likelihood of it occurring. Cold War is the state of conflict tension and competition that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR and their respective allies from the The topic became somewhat less common after the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, as many of the works created during the Cold War were primarily just commentary on that conflict. The Soviet Union 's collapse into independent nations began early in 1985 The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 Asiatic work that deals with the theme and western work influenced by it often borrow much imagery from American atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II in 1945. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuclear attacks near the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Japan topics. ( is the Capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. The Japanese city of ( is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū, the largest of Japan 's To this date, those bombings and the failure of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 remain the only nuclear disasters from which authors and screenwriters can draw real world experience with the aftermath of such instances. The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union. Chernobyl (as transliterated from the Чернобыль) or Chornobyl (as transliterated from Чорнобиль tʃɔrˈnɔbɪlʲ was a city in northern The VI Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (Чернобыльская АЭС им

Authors, directors, and game designers have approached the topic from a variety of angles and in every major media. Novels such as the Hugo Award-winning A Canticle for Leibowitz tell of a reemerging civilization several hundred years after the bombs fell, likening the civilization of the North American survivors to that of the dark ages in Europe. The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best Science fiction or Fantasy works and achievements of the previous year A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic Science fiction Novel by American Walter M This article is about the phrase "Dark Age(s" as a characterization of the Early Middle Ages in Western Europe In other works, such as the Fallout series of video games, nuclear holocaust is used as a backdrop to a dystopian tale of a mutant monsters and beasts. Fallout is a Computer role-playing game produced by Tim Cain, developed by Black Isle Studios (though before the studio was named "Black A mutant is an individual organism or new genetic character arising or resulting from an instance of Mutation, which is a base-pair sequence change within the DNA A monster is any of a large number of Legendary creatures which usually appear in Mythology, Legend, or Horror fiction. In many of these works, a partly forgotten nuclear holocaust provides a backdrop to a new creation story. In a similar vein, the book The City of Ember ties a nuclear holocaust in with the tale of a new civilization's rise. The City of Ember is a 2003 apocalyptic Book by Jeanne DuPrau. In some, the holocaust seems complete. Nevil Shute's 1957 novel On the Beach, for instance, chronicles the extinction of the human race by radioactive fallout in the months following a massive nuclear war; "There Will Come Soft Rains", a famous short story by Ray Bradbury, depicts a world of alarm clocks and robotic vacuum cleaners operating endlessly in the absence of their owners. Nevil Shute Norway ( 17 January 1899 - 12 January 1960) was both a popular novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer On the Beach is a post-apocalyptic end-of-the-world novel written by British-Australian author Nevil Shute after he had immigrated to Australia Radioactive decay is the process in which an unstable Atomic nucleus loses energy by emitting ionizing particles and Radiation. This article is about the short story For the poem by Sara Teasdale see There Will Come Soft Rains. Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22 1920 is an American mainstream, Fantasy, horror, Science fiction and mystery In the early 1980s two made for television movies, Threads in Britain and The Day After in the United States dramatized the devastating effects on civilization of a world nuclear war. Threads is a 1984 BBC Television play depicting the effects of a nuclear war on the United Kingdom and its aftermath The Day After is an American Television movie which aired on November 20 1983, on the ABC Television Network The Terminator series of movies (and its television counterpart about Sarah Connor) is oriented around a nuclear holocaust (called "Judgment Day") triggered by a revolting artificial intelligence. Although not set on Earth, the pilot miniseries of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series depicts a human civilization inhabiting a system of twelve colony planets, where a race of robots (Cylons) the humans created rebel and carry out the destruction of the twelve colonies by a nuclear holocaust. Battlestar Galactica is a franchise of Science fiction Films and television series, the first of which was produced in 1978 The Destruction of the Twelve Colonies is a fictitious interstellar holocaust first depicted in the 1978 motion picture Battlestar Galactica, which set

See also

• List of nuclear holocaust fiction
• Mutual assured destruction
• Nuclear deterrent
• Nuclear weapons in popular culture
• Nuclear winter
• World War III
• Survivalism

References

External links

• Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, By Paul Brians, Professor of English, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington