By early 1985, one year before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, the United States, the Soviet Union and a few other states had together amassed 50,000 nuclear bombs and warheads. These devices threatened destruction 1.5 million times greater than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 40 years earlier. Future generations of historians will struggle to explain why the leading Cold War states devoted so much treasure to so many of these horrible weapons.
Office of Strategic Communication