Why were nuclear weapons developed?

Question

World History

Answer 1

To end WW2 by bombing Hiroshima & Nagasaki. I don't remember which city was bombed 1st but since the Japanese didn't surrender it was decided to bomb another city.....then they surrendered. Nuclear weapons were not needed to end the European war.

Answer 2

since the first ape beat in a skull of an enemy ape with a thigh bone ( see the opening to "2001" ) man has developed bigger and better weapons...knives became swords, horses became tanks, bows became guns......stone became bronze became steel became ceramic and Kevlar.....

Why? well, man is a very creative and inquisitive creature.always asking what if......and so gunpowder, flight, everything you see around you came into existence....and since, up to about today, life was always a competition for food and space , and if you lost you died..a lot of energy is put into offensive and defensive weapons.

The few physicists working in the field in the 1920's and 1930's were a miked bag..most just wanted to split the atom because they realized they could.....and gain a lot of knowledge about ho things are made. Some realized the potential to replace coal and oil as a fuel source in a controlled reaction. Enough also realized that if you had an uncontrolled reaction you had a big boom. As the 20's and 30' lead to the rise of Nazi Germany, German and European physicists realized whoever had control of that big boom might run the world.

Thus the scientists made choices over who they wanted to have that control, and the race was on.

Answer 3

You always try to have more destructive weapons than your enemies.
Developers knew it would be more destructive per pound than anything that had existed previously.
They did not have a good concept of the collateral damage - radiation, shock wave - until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even then they still did not understand the effects of the radiation. In the 1950s observers at atomic bomb tests were unprotected.
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Answer 4

You're kidding, aren't you. There has always been a perceived need to have the biggest club, the sharpest sword, the greatest cannon, the biggest "bang". It's about power; the ability to force the other guy and his neighbors to do what you want and not what they want.
If the US had not been quick to develop nukes, the Germans were well on their way to developing them - and had they succeeded, you'd be speaking German today.

Answer 5

To win a war and to show countries, not just the one bombed, who is boss.

Answer 6

To show others who's the Boss.
The one with the biggest and baddest and most bombs.

Answer 7

to kill mass amounts of people who piss them off.

Answer 8

To blow stuff up.