nuclear weapons
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It all started in 1905, when Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity. According to Einstein, there is a relationship between mass and energy, which he expressed in the equation E=mc2. And in 1939, Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, with British physicist Robert Frisch, discovered the process of nuclear fission.
Thus, the potential of nuclear weapons, which derive its energy from nuclear fission or nuclear fusion, was known by the time World War II broke out. The United States came up with the famous Manhattan Project, led by Robert Oppenheimer, which produced fission-based explosive devices.
And so, from here, the rest was history. Ironically, what started as a harmless discovery turned out into a destructive weapon, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
Undeniably, nuclear weapons are the most devastating among all other weapons of mass destruction. The effects of nuclear weapons are so disheartening that one can't help but think why such weapons were even discovered and used. If you would ask this question to those countries that are currently producing such weapons, they would most likely tell you that they are doing that for self-defense...