Nuclear holocaust
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Nuclear holocaust refers to a possible nearly complete annihilation of human civilization by nuclear warfare. Under such a scenario, all or most of the Earth is made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons in future world wars.
Nuclear physicists and others have speculated that nuclear holocaust could result in an end to human life, or at least to modern civilization on Earth due to the immediate effects of nuclear fallout, the loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses, or nuclear winter and resulting extinctions. Since 1947, the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists visualizes how far the world is from a nuclear holocaust.
The threat of a nuclear holocaust plays an important role in the popular perception of nuclear weapons. It features in the security concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and is a common scenario in survivalism. Nuclear holocaust is a common feature in literature, especially in speculative genres such as science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction.
See also
- Cold War II
- Environmental impact of war
- Global catastrophic risk
- List of nuclear holocaust fiction
- Nuclear terrorism
- World War III
- Nuclear anxiety
