Although most people never gave it much thought, humanity nearly went extinct in a war with no real fighting; this war took the name of the Cold War (SV; SV). The Cold War was the growing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union a few years after World War II. Nuclear weapons had a substantial influence on the arms race during the Cold War. At its peak, the two superpowers had enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone on Earth! Although the Cold War had many different aspects during the buildup of weapons, the most influential was the invention of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons research began in the United States with the creation of the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project began when a British scientist came to the United States with the idea of ​​creating a new, more powerful bomb. The first test was carried out in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. This test showed the world that we had a new technology that could be extremely dangerous to our enemies. The Soviets tested their first nuclear bomb four years later, in 1949 (“Nuclear War”). The arms race continued, and soon weapons began to become far more lethal than anyone could have predicted. “From 1951 to 1965 the United States produced an average of 2,108 nuclear weapons per year” (Lindley). On May 12, 1951, the first thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, was tested in the United States; this bomb was so much more powerful than the atomic bomb that research stopped immediately after its invention (SV;SV). Research soon shifted to submarine-launched ballistic missiles called SLBMs which were first tested in 1960 but were soon outclassed by a new type of more advanced weapon ("Nuclear Warfare"). ICBMs began to become... ....half of paper ......ton, an entire civilization could be destroyed in the blink of an eye. Works Cited Jamesson, Robert P. “The Shortened Fuse of Armageddon: How Advances in Nuclear Weapons Technology Pushed Strategists Towards Mutually Assured Destruction, 1945-1962.” History of Air Power 60.1 (2013): 40-53 Premier Academic Research. Web February 27, 2014. Kristensen, Hans M., and Robert S. Norris. “Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945-2013.” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 69.5 (2013): 75-81. Premier of academic research. Web February 20, 2014. Lindley, Dan and Kevin Clemency. “Low-Cost Nuclear Arms Race.” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 65.2 (2009): 44-51. Premier Web Academic Research. February 27, 2014. “Nuclear War.” Hutchinson Encyclopedia. Electronic Library 2011. Web February 28, 2014. Weiss, Ann E. The Nuclear Arms Race: Can We Survive? Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983. Print.