--Why they are vital to the defense of the United States
English 1 Honors
24 May 2002
Nuclear Weapons and the Affects on Society
Nuclear weapons are very essential to modern society: they provide a common security against the erratic countries in turmoil, and terrorist nations. However, modern society shuns this idea as common acceptance because of the dangers that can result from using these gargantuan means to protect ourselves. The risk involved, it seems is much too great. With the flip of a switch the world could be gone as we know it. Thankfully this has not happened yet, and hopefully it will not happen in the future. This is why nuclear weapons are one of the most controversial issues around because they affect the world as a whole; not individual countries that choose to use them, or that are the targets. Many articles in the press portray nuclear weapons as dangerous due to the lack of quality assurance in the holding areas of these powerful forces; but other articles state that these weapons are merely essential to the modern way of life for protection against terrorist nations.
Early weapons models, such as the "Fat Man" bomb, ...
English: Crater from the 1962 "Sedan" nuclear test...
World map with nuclear weapons development status ...That is what leads people to believe that nuclear weapons are a necessity for the United States against terrorism, but a modern plague on society.
First off, the structure of uranium and plutonium are very dangerous and need to be kept under close watch. The isotope U-235 of uranium is the main ingredient in nuclear weapons. It can easily and readily be split into millions of nuclei, which results in an extremely large amount of energy. This is done by a single neutron colliding with a nucleus, which forms two half-sized nuclei. There are also three neutrons that break away from the nucleus. In this action one one-thousandth of the original...