Can you beat them?
Nuclear Weapons Quiz
Ten questions on the nuclear age, from the Manhattan Project and Nagasaki to the arms race, the near-misses and the treaties that tried to contain it all.
- 10 questions
- About 3 minutes
- Hard
- Includes a map
About this quiz
The quiz follows the bomb from its invention in the 1940s to the collapse of arms control in 2026. It covers the Manhattan Project, the spy who helped Moscow catch up, the hydrogen bomb, the logic of deterrence, a false alarm in 1983 and the one country that built the bomb and then gave it up.
This is a hard quiz. Several answers turn on details that popular accounts get wrong, so knowing the famous dates will not be enough for a high score.
Read up first
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Encyclopedia
Little Boy and Fat Man
The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945: a simple uranium gun bomb and a complex plutonium implosion device.
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Encyclopedia
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
The nuclear standoff in which each side can destroy the other even after absorbing a surprise attack, so striking first buys nothing.
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Encyclopedia
ABM Treaty
The 1972 agreement in which Washington and Moscow promised to stay defenseless against each other's missiles, and which the United States walked out of in 2002.
