“I have become Death, the destroyer of the world,” exclaimed J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of atomic bombs, when he witnessed the detonation of the first-ever nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, in Alamogordo, New Mexico by the United States under Project Manhattan. Oppenheimer described the explosion as if the radiance of a thousand suns burst open at once in the sky.
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What started with the Manhattan Project, became a global phenomenon, and the nuclear explosions were performed at 60 different locations by multiple countries around the world. Between the years 1945 and 1996, when the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-ban Treaty (CTBT) was signed, the world witnessed roughly 2,000 nuclear tests.
It all started with the US testing their 20 kilotonnes nuclear bomb named ‘Trinity’ in fear that the Germans might be working on a similar weapon. After testing their first bomb on July 16, the US dropped the first bomb on Japan on August 6 (Little Boy) and August 9 (Fat Man) at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, killing more than 200,000 people within weeks of detonations. Many more died due to radiation-related illness and disabilities in the following months.
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Following one of the most horrifying incidents mankind has ever witnessed, the UN General Assembly decided to set up a committee for a complete ban on nuclear weapons. However, in the year 1949, the Soviet Union became the second superpower to test its first atomic bomb in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. Three years later, the US went on to test its first Hydrogen Bomb, which was 500 times more deadly than the bomb detonated in Nagasaki.
According to the United Nations, the United States conducted a total of 1032 nuclear tests between 1945 and 1992, while the Soviet Union detonated 715 atomic bombs between 1949 and 1990. China carried out 45 tests in 1964-1996. India carried out its first nuclear test named ‘Smiling Buddha’ in 1974 in Pokhran, followed by two more tests in 1998 under the governance of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
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