In the long, tense years of the Cold War, which ran roughly from the end of World War II until 1991, nations across the globe were building up their arsenals, testing nuclear weapons, and spending plenty of time worrying about what the other side was planning against them. The two major nations involved in the simmering conflict, which never technically broke into outright war, were the United States and the Soviet Union. Both engaged in plenty of propaganda and posturing, as well as espionage and economic strikes, but everyone also knew about the terrible power of nuclear weapons.

They'd witnessed the effects of nuclear detonations on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were struck by the Americans in August 1945 and resulted in massive destruction, the immediate deaths

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