The United states detonated the world's first thermonuclear weapon which was a hydrogen bomb. This detonation took place after the Soviet Union detonated it's first atomic device in September of 1949 and the U.S. decided to go one step ahead of them in the terms of atomic weaponry. Hydrogen bombs are 1000 times more powerful than the conventional nuclear devices at the time which made it very important that the United states got their hands on this technology first. A year later the Soviet Union detonated a thermonuclear device and by the late 1970s there were seven nations that had constructed hydrogen bombs of their own which progressed the nuclear arms race forward once again.
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