Nuclear holocaust

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Mushroom cloud from the explosion of a hydrogen bomb

Nuclear holocaust refers to the complete or nearly complete eradication of human civilization by nuclear warfare. Under such a scenario, all or most of the Earth is burnt and destroyed by nuclear weapons in future world wars.

The word "holocaust" is defined as "great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire."^[1]. It is derived from the Greek term "holokaustos" meaning "burnt whole". In the aftermath of World War II, "holocaust" is now most commonly associated with the attempted annihilation of the Jewish and other "inferior" people in nations under Nazi control, known as "The Holocaust".

Nuclear physicists and speculative fiction speculate that nuclear holocaust could result in an end to human life and/or modern civilization on Earth due to the immediate effects of nuclear fallout, the loss of much modern technology due to electromagnetic pulses, or extinction events caused by it, such as nuclear winter.

[edit] Nuclear holocaust in popular culture

The theme is widely used in dystopian fiction books and films. Throughout the Cold War, nuclear holocaust was something most people were afraid of and it seemed to be very possible. The topic became somewhat less common after the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, as many of the works created during the Cold War were primarily just commentary on that conflict. Asiatic work that deals with the theme and western work influenced by it often borrow much imagery from American atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. To this date, those bombings and the failure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant remain the only nuclear disasters from which authors and screenwriters can draw real world experience with the aftermath of such instances.

Authors, directors, and game designers have approached the topic from a variety of angles and in every major media. Novels such as the Hugo Award winning Canticle for Leibowitz tell of a reemerging civilization several hundred years after the bombs fell, likening the civilization of the North American survivors to that of the dark ages in Europe. In other works, such as the Fallout series of video games, nuclear holocaust is used as a backdrop to a dystopian tale of a mutant monsters and beasts. In many of these works, a partly forgotten nuclear holocaust provides a backdrop to a new creation story. In a similar vein, the book The City of Ember ties a nuclear holocaust in with the tale of a new civilization's rise. In some, the holocaust seems complete. There Will Come Soft Rains, a famous short story by Ray Bradbury, depicts a world of alarm clocks and robotic vacuum cleaners operating endlessly in the absence of their owners.