The Atomic Age

The Atomic Age is the historical period beginning with the first controlled nuclear chain reaction achieved by Enrico Fermi's team in Chicago in December 1942 and the subsequent development and use of atomic weapons by the United States against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which brought the Second World War in the Pacific to an end and inaugurated an era shaped by the existence of nuclear weapons. The period saw a rapid nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, punctuated by crises such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, alongside the parallel development of civilian nuclear power for electricity generation beginning in the 1950s. The threat of mutually assured destruction shaped Cold War strategy, diplomacy and popular culture for decades, and the continued existence and proliferation of nuclear weapons means its defining condition has never fully lifted.