The atomic bomb
Humanity gains the power to end itself
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The Manhattan Project turned Einstein's mass–energy equivalence and nuclear fission into a weapon in four years, employing 130,000 people. Around 200,000 people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of them civilians. The postwar era was defined by deterrence: the Cold War, the race for ever larger arsenals, and a mutual security resting on the threat of mutual destruction. It is also the first time humanity as a species acquired a self-inflicted existential risk to manage.
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A single bomb destroyed nearly all of Hiroshima in an instant. Three days later another fell on Nagasaki. For the first time, humans had built a weapon capable of destroying our entire civilisation.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org