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Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Difference between revisions
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Contrast our modern attitude about nuclear weapons to fiction of the pre-war eras in which devastating super-weapons were romanticized to the point of being able to end all war forever. For example, Alfred Nobel believed that if such a tremendously powerful weapon could be devised, the potential war casualties would become so high when compared to any possible gains that nations of the world would abandon warfare altogether. Following this, there would be no need for the weapons themselves, and everyone would just hold hands and get along. When real-life superweapons appeared at the end of World War II, military and political leaders still considered nuclear weapons to be really big bombs, but not inherently different than any other munition. The Nuclear Weapons Taboo only came as people learned about the hideous and lingering effects of these weapons and came to realize that nuclear war could push humans to extinction.
A little-addressed and more insidious side to this problem, however, is how easily superweapon taboo is rendered obsolete. ''Fusion'' (let alone [[antimatter]]) explosions, unlike nuclear, don't have an inherent lower limit on yield, and the easiest to "ignite" fusion fuels are Deuterium and Tritium, literally extracted from water. In real life, this does not change the game much: starting a self-sustaining fusion reaction requires a nuclear explosion, thus a fusion warhead inherits all limitations of its nuclear detonator. However, somewhere near the point<ref>it's mostly a matter of practical pulse power and energy storage solutions</ref> when beam weapons can become common sidearms, it would be also possible to implement "clean" ignition - ultimately, it's about pouring energy into plasma fast enough for long enough. Without the inconvenient part that is nuke, fusion warheads would leave much less (and in less dangerous forms) radioactive contamination and could have very low yield. This means they stop being exclusively strategical weapons and may appear as, for example, modestly priced shells for portable mortars and small craft autocannons. Without even a blurred line separating "shoot a grenade at that foxhole" and "level this city" yields, just like with high explosives - but with less difference in size. Non-proliferation only somewhat works with Uranium and expensive specialized infrastructure; keeping a taboo that can be boiled away with common sidearm magazine and tap water is a pipe-dream.
If there is a weapon treated in a similar manner to nuclear ones but isn't referred to as such not because of censorship, but because it doesn't make sense in that setting, it's a [[Fantastic Nuke]]. Almost any series involving a [[Wave Motion Gun]] involves this. Compare [[Never Say "Die"]].
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== Literature ==
* In at least the early novels of Frank Herbert's ''[[Dune]]'' series, it is implied that most or all of the noble "Great Houses" have nuclear weapons (the "house atomics") but that the Great Convention which binds the houses together expressly forbids any house from using their atomics against another. Houses that do apply those weapons directly are usually cast out, losing their fief and becoming a renegade house. Of course, late in the first book, Paul Atreides {{spoiler|indirectly uses the recovered Atreides family atomics against the Harkonnens and Corrinos when he blasts a hole through the stone Shield Wall near their landing site to allow sandworm riding Fremen fighters through to start a battle.}} In the second book, Paul himself, along with many of his soldiers and associates, {{spoiler|was a victim of a nuclear weapons attack which left him blinded.}}
** The subtle parts is that "atomics" apparently are kept for being controllable: a nuke-grade explosion can be initiates simply by shooting at a small shield (pretty much ubiquitous) with a lascannon (slightly less widespread only due to this very problem). Which is not done on purpose because before even starting to argue whether a lascannon hit was accidental, one would need to prove it was not prohibited atomics - which is a dubious prospect when others are inclined to err on the side of ''their'' safety and possible evidence is evaporated in the incident.
* Played with in ''[[Young Zaphod Plays It Safe]]'' by [[Douglas Adams]]. The most horrible weapons ever invented, including nuclear and all kinds of engineered gasses and virii, are actually perfectly safe compared to [[Anvilicious|a politician willing to use them]].
* Averted in the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' series. Nuclear weapons have fallen out of use not because they're inherently illegal, but because they're ineffective compared to bomb-pumped X-ray lasers. One book also has a [[Space Pirate]] nuke a city.
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== Film- Live Action ==
* The first ''[[Godzilla]]'' movie is a parable about nuclear weapons, with Godzilla having been created by US nuclear tests (a fact left out of the version of the film that was re-edited for U.S. release). (Said parable is entirely lost in the sequels.)
* The Soviet director Leonid Gaidai exploited this trope to save his comedy ''The Diamond Arm'' from censorship. The film included controversial (by Soviet standards) scenes, such as a striptease, the protagonist's drunken debauche and an anti-Semitic remark by a rather unpleasant Soviet bureaucrat. Before showing the film to the censors Gaidai inserted the footage of a nuclear explosion into the epilogue. The censors, in a state of shock, allowed Gaidai to leave most of the film intact, on the condition that he cuts out the nuke and the anti-Semitic remark. ''The Diamond Arm'' is
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