140 articles
Pantex Plant
Pantex Plant, built in 1942 northeast of Amarillo, Texas, in Carson County, is the United States' primary nuclear weapons facility, assembling and dismantling warheads and storing plutonium pits.
PBX-9501
PBX-9501 is a plastic-bonded explosive developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, made of about 95 percent HMX in an Estane binder and used as the main charge in United States nuclear warheads.
PBX-9502
PBX-9502 is an insensitive plastic-bonded high explosive of 95% TATB crystals and 5% Kel-F 800 binder, serving as the main charge in US nuclear weapons since 1979.
Pine Bluff Arsenal
Pine Bluff Arsenal is a U.S. Army installation near Pine Bluff, Arkansas, established in 1941, which made chemical munitions and destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile by 2010.
Plutonium pit
A plutonium pit is the spherical plutonium core at the center of a thermonuclear weapon, serving as the first-stage fission trigger that detonates its fusion reaction.
Pokhran-II (पोखरण-II)
Pokhran-II, also designated Operation Shakti, was a series of five underground nuclear tests India conducted at the Pokhran range in Rajasthan on 11 and 13 May 1998, its first since 1974.
Porton Down
Porton Down is a UK government defense research site in Wiltshire, England, established in March 1916 for chemical warfare work and now home to Dstl.
Pueblo Chemical Depot
Pueblo Chemical Depot was a United States Army installation near Pueblo, Colorado, that stored the nation's mustard agent stockpile until it was destroyed in 2023.
Ray cat
The ray cat (Strahlenkatze) is a hypothetical cat breed proposed in 1984 by Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri that would change color near radiation, warning of buried nuclear waste.
RDS-1 (РДС-1)
RDS-1 (РДС-1), American codename Joe-1, was the first Soviet atomic bomb, a copy of the Fat Man design detonated on 29 August 1949 at Semipalatinsk, ending the US nuclear monopoly.
Red Beard (nuclear weapon)
Red Beard was the first British tactical nuclear weapon, an unboosted fission gravity bomb carried by RAF and Royal Navy aircraft from about 1960 to the early 1970s.
Red mercury
Red mercury is a purported substance, supposedly used in nuclear weapons, that has never been shown to exist; black-market sales since the late 1980s were fraud.
Rocky Flats Plant
The Rocky Flats Plant was a US nuclear weapons production facility near Denver, Colorado, that fabricated plutonium pits for the nuclear stockpile from 1952 until 1989.
Russia and weapons of mass destruction
Russia holds the world's largest nuclear arsenal, about 5,420 warheads; its 2024 doctrine widened nuclear use conditions, and New START, which Russia suspended in 2023, expired in February 2026.
Sarin
Sarin, also known as sarin gas, is a human-made organophosphate nerve agent, colorless and nearly odorless, developed in Germany in 1943 and banned as a Schedule 1 chemical weapon.
Semipalatinsk Test Site (Семипалатинский испытательный полигон)
The Semipalatinsk Test Site (Семипалатинский испытательный полигон), known in Kazakhstan as the Polygon, was the Soviet Union's principal nuclear testing ground, hosting 456 nuclear tests from 1949 to 1989.
Smiling Buddha
Smiling Buddha, officially Pokhran-I, was the code name of India's first nuclear test, an underground plutonium implosion device detonated at the Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan on 18 May 1974.
Soman
Soman, also known as soman nerve gas, is a human-made organophosphorus nerve agent developed in Germany in 1944, a clear colorless liquid that inhibits acetylcholinesterase and can kill within minutes.
South Africa and weapons of mass destruction
South Africa was the first country to dismantle its entire nuclear, chemical, and ballistic weapons programs after building six gun-type fission devices, retaining civilian nuclear status.
Soviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet atomic bomb project, also called the Soviet nuclear program, was the secret USSR effort to develop nuclear weapons, led by Igor Kurchatov and Lavrentiy Beria.
Soviet Union and weapons of mass destruction
The Soviet Union maintained one of the world's two largest weapons of mass destruction arsenals from the late 1940s until its dissolution in 1991, spanning nuclear, chemical, and biological arms.
Special Atomic Demolition Munition
The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) was a man-portable US nuclear backpack weapon built around the W54 warhead, carried by trained soldiers and deployed from 1964 to 1989.
Starfish Prime
Starfish Prime, part of Operation Fishbowl, was a 1962 US high-altitude nuclear test that detonated a 1.4-megaton warhead above Johnston Island, disabling satellites and causing EMP damage in Hawaii.
Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System
Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System, publicly named Poseidon and given the NATO reporting name Kanyon, is a Russian intercontinental-range, nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed autonomous torpedo launched from special-purpose submarines and announced by Putin in 2018.
Stockpile stewardship
Stockpile stewardship is the United States program of science, surveillance, and manufacturing that keeps the nuclear weapons stockpile safe and reliable without explosive testing, established in 1993.
Suitcase nuclear device
A suitcase nuclear device, also called a suitcase nuke, is a small nuclear weapon carried by one or two people, matching the US SADM and Soviet nuclear backpacks.
Sundial (weapon)
Sundial, also known as Project Sundial, was a proposed American thermonuclear weapon with a yield of 10,000 megatons, put forward by Edward Teller in 1954 and never built.
Tabun (nerve agent)
Tabun, military designation GA, is a man-made organophosphorus nerve agent and the first ever synthesized, by Gerhard Schrader at IG Farben in 1936 during insecticide research.
Tactical nuclear weapon
A tactical nuclear weapon, or tactical nuke, is a nuclear warhead for use against military targets in a limited theater, defined by role and range rather than yield.
Tear gas
Tear gas, formally called lachrymatory agent or riot control agent, is a chemical weapon class used by police and militaries for crowd control, chiefly CS, CN, and pepper spray.