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
Little Boy and Fat Man were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
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Encyclopedia
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
Mutually assured destruction is the condition in which both sides of a nuclear standoff can destroy each other even after absorbing a first strike.
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Encyclopedia
ABM Treaty
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was a 1972 US-Soviet agreement banning nationwide missile defense, in force until the United States withdrew in 2002.
