Portal:Weapons of mass destruction/Featured picture

The LG-118A Peacekeeper missile system being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Photo credit: U.S. Army Forces Strategic Command

A rope trick is the whimsical term given by physicist Dr. John Malik to the curious lines and spikes which emanate from the fireball of a nuclear explosion just after detonation. The image is from the Tumbler-Snapper test series of 1952.

Photo credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Teller-Ulam design is a nuclear weapons design used for megaton-range thermonuclear weapons or hydrogen bombs. It uses a fission bomb as a trigger to ignite a fusion explosion by compressing the fusion fuel with a radiation implosion.

Illustration credit: Fastfission

Photo taken by a Lockheed U-2 spy plane of the San Cristobal MRBM launch site in Cuba, November 1962, after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although this image was taken days after the crisis had ended (October 28), this image has become iconic of the crisis to the point where it is often cited incorrectly as having been taken during the crisis.

Photo credit: United States Air Force

Although used occasionally in later experimental devices, this nuclear weapon design was used only once as a weapon, in Little Boy, because of the extreme danger of a misfire. A simple crash could drive the "bullet" into the "target" and release lethal radiation doses or even a full nuclear detonation.

Illustration credit: Fastfission