nuclear war

nuclear war (countable and uncountable, plural nuclear wars)

1. A war fought using nuclear (fission and/or fusion) weapons.
   • 1971, Lyndon Johnson, “Thawing the Cold War”, in The Vantage Point‎, Holt, Reinhart & Winston, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 462:

     IF JULY 1, 1968, figures in the history books of the future, it will be because of what happened that morning in the East Room of the White House. A few minutes after 11:30 A.M., in that gold-draped room, before hundreds of witnesses and in the glare of television floodlights, representatives of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and more than fifty other nations signed the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Under that treaty, nations without nuclear weapons promised not to make them or receive them from others; the treaty assured those nations that they would have access to the full benefits of the peaceful uses of nuclear power. Nations with nuclear weapons pledged to work toward effective arms control and disarmament.
     This was the most significant step we had yet taken to reduce the possibility of nuclear war. In my remarks following the signing ceremony, I called the treaty "the most important international agreement since the beginning of the nuclear age."

   • 2024 February 29, Pjotr Sauer, “Sending troops to Ukraine would risk provoking nuclear war, Putin tells Nato”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     Vladimir Putin has told Nato countries that they risk provoking a nuclear war if they send troops to fight in Ukraine, in an annual state of the nation speech ramping up his threats against Europe and the US.