ABSTRACT
On 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In that and the subsequent raid on Nagasaki three days later more than 100,000 people died, a similar number were injured and much of the two cities was destroyed. Few would not argue that those events dramatically changed the concept of warfare. There had been other shifts into new and exotic areas of capability in the past, such as the use of chemical weapons in the trenches of the First World War. The latter could produce relatively indiscriminate damage, including to civilian populations, but none had had the capacity to override so completely the effectiveness of other defensive systems and to threaten such enormous destruction. Furthermore, the possession of nuclear weapons by only a few nations and the difficulties, costs and long leadtimes involved in attempting to acquire it underpinned a new global balance.
