The Atomic Bomb

When American atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they ended the Second World War and opened an age in which humanity, for the first time, could destroy itself. Total war between great powers suddenly risked annihilation, and the old logic of conquest froze under the threat of mutual destruction. It was a military-technological rupture on the scale of gunpowder — but this time it rewrote what war between the strong could even mean.