Without giving away classified information, I can say that the real use for Special Weapons is battlefield intimidation and political leverage . . . in certain circumstances.

These horrific things come in nine major varieties, can be deployed in over 2,000 well-considered tactical and strategic scenarios, and the tactics of their use has come under increasing concern among the weapons community.

We who opened the nuclear genie's bottle have spent the last sixty-four years stuffing said genie back in his bottle. However, the only two weapons actually used in combat ended WWII, and we would still be fighting it today except for them. The loss of life on both sides would have been far worse without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I will not go into the function and internal workings of nuclear weapons. They are not what they would seem. I will say that a nuclear war depends on speed, timing of attacks, and the context of the war that precipitated those attacks.

It would not be necessary to raise mushroom clouds over a city to disable it: one weapon can completely fry a major power utility that will knock out an entire state long enough to land troops virtually unopposed. That is only one tactical scenario, for which we are well prepared.

Other weapons leave the lights on, but no living thing would survive well past the horizon: long gone is the day of the "line of sight" weapon.

"Blast" type weapons are a last resort. These nasty things became obsolete 50 years ago. It is not that they are "dirty." They are obsolete because they don't get the job done.

Fears that ingenious high school weirdoes could make "basement nukes" are a little farfetched: they don't have the information on how to build these wretched things, but terrorist organizations and rogue states do not suffer that limitation.

Negotiations with 27 confirmed nuclear nations went well until Obama broke good faith with all of them. Now, tensions are again very high and will not go back down until we have a president who keeps his word.