Who will drop the next nuclear weapon? Nobody. 

Mitch Adams, reporter 

It’s 1945. Planes soar over the island of Japan loaded with atomic bombs powerful enough to demolish entire cities in minutes. Four years earlier, the Japanese led one of the most infamous attacks in United States history by bombing the military base at Pearl Harbor. The American revenge attack mesmerized the public, with the help of the single thought on the mind of the commander in chief and his political allies. “End the war.”  

Our society in the U.S in 2024 has become an argument-ridden hellscape of politics, with there being one single idea we can agree upon; that no one can agree about anything. One of the top fighting points in international politics is the use of weapons of mass destruction. Do they exist to be used? Or are these over-developed killing devices used solely as something to spew threats to foreign powers about?  

When it comes to the ultimate weapon, the nuclear bomb, there is a large divide on whether citizens think it’s justified to use them in modern wartime. A poll was done in 2020 by the Chicago Council Survey showing that 66% of Americans believe that no country in the world should be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. If a weapon like that was used against the U.S, one can only imagine the mass panic and impact it would have in the West.  

The reason why I believe that no political power will use a world destroying weapon like the nuclear bomb again is a fear that citizens and powerful leaders have in common — the human race’s future being affected. Fear-mongering has become all too common, with weapons of mass destruction almost used as a tool to dangle over the heads of foreign opponents and instill fear in the targeted country or power, rather than being detonated and causing depressive and story-ending results. 

Politicians continue to show that pushing more and more conflict is still in the best interest of the U.S, to the point where leaders like Vladimir Putin record interviews in the Kremlin bragging about his nuclear capabilities and sending warnings to the West about using nukes if the States keep interfering in the Ukraine. To me, it seems like a game to see who will be pushed the farthest. Games like that spread fear to the people which is its own sort of weapon. Seeing the aftermath of nuclear warfare in the 1940’s should give leaders a good reason to resist from reaching that point of conflict.