140 articles
Cyclosarin
Cyclosarin (GF) is a colorless, odorless organophosphate nerve agent of the G series, a Schedule 1 chemical warfare agent and the most toxic G agent through the skin.
David Kelly (weapons expert)
David Christopher Kelly (1944–2003) was a British microbiologist who led UN biological weapons inspections in Iraq and died in July 2003 after being named as the source of a BBC report.
Davy Crockett (nuclear device)
The Davy Crockett was an American tactical nuclear weapon system, a recoilless rifle firing the M388 projectile with the W54 warhead, in service from 1961 to 1971.
Dead Hand
Dead Hand is the Western nickname for Perimeter, a Soviet and Russian system created in the Cold War to transmit a retaliatory nuclear strike order even if leadership was destroyed.
Dirty bomb
A dirty bomb, or radiological dispersal device, combines conventional explosives with radioactive material to scatter contamination; no atomic blast occurs, and none has been used in terrorism.
Doomsday device
A doomsday device, or Doomsday Bomb, is a hypothetical weapon designed to kill most or all of humanity, conceived by Leo Szilard in 1950 and analyzed by Herman Kahn.
Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility
The Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory uses two perpendicular X-ray accelerators to image imploding mock nuclear weapon pits for stockpile stewardship.
Edgewood Arsenal human experiments
The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments were classified U.S. Army studies exposing about 7,000 soldier volunteers to over 250 chemicals, including nerve agents and LSD, from 1955 to 1975.
Effects of nuclear explosions
The effects of nuclear explosions, or nuclear weapon effects, are the blast waves, thermal radiation, prompt radiation, electromagnetic pulse, and radioactive fallout from a nuclear detonation.
Fat Man
Fat Man, also known as the Nagasaki atomic bomb, was the plutonium implosion bomb dropped by the United States on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, the second nuclear weapon used in war.
France and weapons of mass destruction
France, sometimes called French nuclear weapons, is one of nine nuclear-weapon states with an estimated 290 warheads, built through 210 tests from 1960 to 1996.
Gay bomb
The "gay bomb" was a proposed 1994 US Air Force chemical weapon meant to make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to each other; it was never built.
Gold Codes
Gold Codes, proposed by Robert Gold in 1967, are pseudorandom binary sequences used in GPS and CDMA; the name also refers to US presidential nuclear authentication codes.
Greenhouse George
Greenhouse George was a 225-kiloton United States nuclear test at Enewetak Atoll on May 9, 1951, the third Operation GREENHOUSE shot and the first controlled thermonuclear burn on earth.
Gruinard Island
Gruinard Island, off northwest Scotland, was contaminated with anthrax spores during British biological warfare trials in 1942-43, decontaminated with formaldehyde in seawater in 1986, and returned to its owners in 1990.
Gun-type fission weapon
A gun-type fission weapon, also called a gun-type nuclear bomb, is a design that fires two subcritical uranium masses together, used in the Hiroshima bomb Little Boy.
Halabja chemical attack
The Halabja chemical attack was a chemical weapons bombardment of the Kurdish city of Halabja in northern Iraq by Iraqi forces on 16 March 1988, killing about 5,000 civilians.
History of nuclear weapons
The history of nuclear weapons covers the Manhattan Project's first atomic bombs in 1945, their use on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War arms race, and arms control.
History of the Teller–Ulam design
The Teller–Ulam design is the hydrogen bomb principle in which X-rays from a fission bomb compress thermonuclear fuel, first tested in the 1952 Ivy Mike shot.
Implosion-type nuclear weapon
An implosion-type nuclear weapon is a fission bomb design in which high explosives compress a subcritical pit of plutonium or uranium into a supercritical chain reaction.
Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
Iraq under Saddam Hussein built and used chemical weapons, developed biological weapons, and pursued nuclear weapons, then disarmed after 1991 while pretending to retain its arsenal, contributing to the 2003 invasion.
Ivy King
Ivy King was a 500-kiloton nuclear test conducted by the United States on 15 November 1952 at Enewetak Atoll, the largest pure-fission bomb it ever tested.
Ivy Mike
Ivy Mike was the first full-scale test of a hydrogen bomb, detonated by the United States on 1 November 1952 at Enewetak Atoll with a 10.4-megaton yield.
Kansas City National Security Campus
The Kansas City National Security Campus is a Department of Energy facility in Kansas City, Missouri, producing most nonnuclear components, over 80%, of U.S. nuclear weapons.
Lewisite
Lewisite is an organic arsenical vesicant chemical warfare agent developed in the United States late in World War I but never used in warfare, causing severe blistering.
List of nuclear weapons
The list of nuclear weapons covers the world's principal nuclear weapons, warhead types, and national arsenals, with nine countries holding roughly 12,187 warheads as of 2026.
List of nuclear weapons tests
The list of nuclear weapons tests catalogs over 2,000 nuclear tests by at least eight nations since 1945, from Nevada to Semipalatinsk, including the Soviet Tsar Bomba.
Little Boy
Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb, was the gun-type uranium-235 atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb used in warfare.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, established in 1943 as Site Y of the Manhattan Project.
Mark 7 nuclear bomb
The Mark 7, code-named Thor, was an American implosion-type tactical nuclear bomb produced from 1952, the first carried by US Air Force and Navy fighters, serving until the late 1960s.