Eighty years after Hiroshima: how close is nuclear conflict?

Eight decades on from the first atomic bomb 'we have blundered into a new age of nuclear perils'

Photo composite illustration of nuclear bomb tests, maps of Japan and Hiroshima, urban devastation and a survivor
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images)

Today marks 80 years since the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

More than 140,000 people died – tens of thousands instantaneously – with 70,000 perishing in a second bomb over Nagasaki three days later.

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