On Thursday January 24th, Kim Jong Un, the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (known in the West as North Korea), declared that they will be test= launching a number of long range missile tests with the capability of reaching the United States. The United States knows that North Korea is capable of performing these tests but they are not sure if they will carry them out. It is a big concern for the U.N. and the United States since these tests are aimed directly at the U.S. or the “sworn enemies of North Korea.” This could cause a lot of tension between North Korea and the U.S., since North Korea is known to have perfected a nuclear weapon.
Nuclear weapons tests are mostly for gathering information about how structures, environments, and organisms stand against an explosion of that force. The type of nuclear tests are atmospheric, underground, exo-atmospheric (above the Earth’s atmosphere), and underwater. The United States was the first country to test a nuclear bomb and the first to use it as nuclear warfare. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6th through 9th, 1945. It showed what can really happen when a nuclear bomb used as a weapon of war. Combined these bombs killed a total of 240,000 people.
Now there are bans put on the testing of these nuclear weapons today. Many, but not all nations, have signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty to ban nuclear weapon testing in the atmosphere, underwater, or in space. North Korea has not signed this treaty (as well as France and China.) They are able to text these weapons of mass destruction without permission. Who knows what they are really testing these nuclear bombs and long range missiles for? The North Koreans are ruthless and their hatred for the U.S. might be tied up with this, who knows? All we know is that we have to be prepared because anything can go wrong.
