[quote=@ASTA] Yeah, but this is thirty-five years in the future. It's probable that the rate of nuclear proliferation was flung into high gear during the onset of WWIII. As the war gradually intensified, and as nuclear weapons were utilized, this proliferation rate might've been dramatically energized. And if you're a superpower and you're still using uranium to produce nukes, then you've failed to keep pace with your aspiring adversaries. You should be producing pure fusion, antimatter-catalyzed fusion, or pure antimatter warheads at this point. Ethiopia should at least be able to drum up a few gun-type fission bombs. They don't require plutonium, are comparatively cheap to produce, and don't require a robust technological base to engineer and manufacture--but they're woefully inefficient when compared to more sophisticated nuclear weapon designs. Implosion-type nuclear bombs are an option as well, but they're a fair bit more advanced than their gun-type cousins. [/quote] I suppose that's fair. But equally, those countries without well-developed industrial bases wouldn't have the capability to maintain a full-fledged nuclear arsenal. Sure, they could have a sizable collection of bombs (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima of the same type only killed half the city), but hardly silos full of ICBMs and nuclear missile subs patrolling the oceans. Just as an example. Creating a plutonium (implosion-type) bomb requires a the construction and operation of a breeder reactor, so it's probably equally hard to make as the refined uranium. The only problem with pure fusion is having enough heat to start a fusion reaction without the other nuclear weapon present. You could use a laser or some type of electromagnetic radiation, but then you need enough power to heat all of the hydrogen up at once, and as a result you'd have a bomb surrounded by batteries to the point where it would be obscenely heavy even to drop from a bomber, let alone carry with a missile. Antimatter... you'd either need the aforementioned heaps of batteries or have an attached nuclear reactor just to power the magnetic containment field. And even then, I doubt you'd be able to accumulate the amount necessary for a sizable bomb without it hitting normal matter.