After World War II, peacetime military strategy changed fairly dramatically as a consequence of what the world learned during the

war alongside the technologies that were developed or which had already been developed but which were

finally implemented, teaching everyone involved a whole lot about what works, what doesn't,

and how we might do better next time around. Better in this context defined in terms of achieving a military victory

while experiencing as little devastation as possible back on the home front. One of the most

fundamental shifts that emerged in the latter half of the 20th century, though, was oriented around

one technology in particular, or rather one collection

of related technologies that are often lumped together, nuclear weapons.

It's thought that the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, at least in part to

demonstrate to the world to their potential future military opponents

that the US had the biggest stick and wasn't afraid to use it.

These attacks were also thought to save the United States the lives and resources

that would have otherwise been expended during an island invasion

against what was considered to be a fanatical enemy, while also

serving as a real-world proof of concept as to the capabilities of these new weapons.

Tests had been done enough to make deploying them a good bet, but we still weren't 100% certain

as to what we could expect in terms of fallout, in terms of the different

levels of devastation that might be wrought based on how high up the bombs were detonated,

and in terms of how human beings in the blast zone, just beyond the blast zone, and within

the same country, but well away from the blast zone, would respond to such weapons. Those lessons were

learned, or at least the fundamentals were picked up. Testing continued for many decades,

though, and still continues to a limited degree today, though it's not the United States doing

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