History Main / NuclearOption

The Nuclear Option is the well-considered and appropriate use of nuclear weaponry by a legitimate authority. Perhaps the enemy has already launched nukes at allied targets, maybe the target is NighInvulnerable and a nuke is the only way to crack through its protections, or ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure. It's possible that some {{Cool Starship}}s are flinging nukes at each other in an otherwise empty space - see ExplosionsInSpace. The situation might already be so bad that [[GodzillaThreshold the potential for massive collateral damage doesn't matter anymore]]. In any case, the Nuclear Option is, ultimately, a ''good idea'', or at least reasonable. Differs from an EmptyQuiver, as the Nuclear Option is ordered by a legitimate authority. Also, unlike NukeEm or DeusExNukina, it's neither overkill nor likely to backfire and the nuke does something that actually makes sense.

** In both ''Anime/{{Macross 7}}'', ''Anime/MacrossZero'' and ''Anime/MacrossFrontier'', Reaction Weapons are seen as very much "last resort" weapons that are only deployed when it becomes clear that the enemy they're fighting is dangerous enough to warrant such countermeasures.

** "The Apocalypse War" storyline had Dredd defeat the Sov Block by nuking them. With their own nukes.
** During the "Judgement Day" arc, Dredd had several cities nuked that had been [[ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure overrun by zombies]].
* There is a scene in one of the ''ComicBook/MarvelZombies'' issues where Director Fury was deliberating whether or not to resort to this while New York was rapidly being devoured. Unfortunately, before it could be implemented, Quicksilver was infected, and infected every nation in the span of a few minutes.
* In ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' the US have threatened to use them against the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Evronians]] more than once, and actually did so twice. {{Justified}} because the Evronian superior technology means nukes are the only Earth weapons that can actually damage their ships... Provided they actually hit, as the first time they were fired [[ShootTheBullet the Evronians shot down the missiles]]. This is, in fact, the reason Evronians haven't tried to conquer earth by force; They can shoot down individual nukes, but they have no idea how many nukes we have, and don't know if they'd be able to protect themselves against an all-out nuclear strike.
* In ''Comicbook/KingdomCome,'' [[spoiler:the U.N. finally resorts to this to stop the massive super hero civil war from spreading out and destroying the world. It successfully kills most of them, but not all -- most notably not Superman, who is ''[[BewareTheNiceOnes furious.]]'']]
* ComicBook/UltimateMarvel
** ''ComicBook/UltimateOrigins'': In the ComicBook/UltimateMarvel universe, Roosevelt did not start the war, but he's willing to end it by any means if it comes to that. He has the atomic bomb (an [[ArtisticLicenseHistory artistic licence]]), but using it would be a genocide. So, he prefers to rely on the sole super soldier available instead. As he seems to die stoping a Chitauri rocket, the US had to use the bomb to end the war with Japan.
** ''ComicBook/TheUltimates''

*** Also, they send everything they've got against the city, a futuristic dome created by [[ComicBook/UltimateFantasticFour The Maker]] and which had already destroyed Berlin. But they resisted it, and the Maker blows up all of Washington DC as a counter attack.

* In ''[[FanFic/AnEntryWithABang An Entry with a Bang!]]'', nukes soften up the marauding pirates before they make Earthfall and massive nuclear rearmament is in progress in a bid to construct a shield of sorts to ward off future hostile interlopers from a ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' faction.

* ''Film/TheAvengers2012'': During the [[spoiler: Chitauri invasion]] at the climax, an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness sends a nuke at Manhattan (technically they sent two nukes, but that was only because they were GenreSavvy enough to know that ComicBook/NickFury would blow one of the planes up) rather than let [[spoiler: the aliens]] spread to the rest of the world. [[spoiler: This actually saves the day when Film/IronMan [[RelocatingTheExplosion redirects it by physically dragging the bomb to the alien ship instead]]]].

** A direct shout-out to George Pal's ''Film/{{The War Of The Worlds|1953}}'', even down to the aircraft used - in ''WOTW'', the Northrop YB-49 flying wing jet bomber (which was NOT a film prop but an actual USAF prototype); in ''[=ID4=]'', the Northrop B-2 flying wing jet bomber.

* [[UsefulNotes/HarryTruman President Truman]] chose to utilize the literal Nuclear Option in the Air Force's de-urbanisation campaign before using it in the Allied campaign to occupy the Japanese home islands (first phase November 1945, Operation Olympic, part of the larger Operation Downfall). If all it did was start firestorms that would raze two of the four marginally important cities that it had proven impossible to set afire like the other 82 (87 including those four plus Kyoto, but Kyoto was taken off the list), at the cost of just four flights' worth of fuel and a few dozen men's wages instead of the fuel and bombs and pay for many thousands of planes and men, then that was an obvious saving - the USA would have as many bombs as it needed by November, so why not use these two now? But if the bombings convinced the Japanese that the USA was producing so many nuclear weapons that it could afford to waste two of these incredibly expensive superbombs on razing two cities of very marginal military value (given the virtual shutdown of the entire Japanese economy) and have enough to spare for the invasion, then that might convince the Japanese to surrender before the guaranteed-to-succeed-at-minimal-cost invasion even began. [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki It worked: all Japanese estimates of American A-Bomb productivity concurred that they would at least have the handful necessary to catastrophically undermine command-and-control of Japanese forces attempting to repel the American invasion, and some speculated (because their own programme was not sufficiently advanced to gauge this effectively) that the Americans might have many dozens or even hundreds of weapons within the next few months or even at that very moment.]]

* ''LightNovel/MuvLuvAlternativeTotalEclipse'': The United States has ''very'' few qualms about using nuclear weapons and the newer G-Bomb against [[HordeOfAlienLocusts the BETA]], which earns the ire of many other nations. However, even the [[NuclearWeaponsTaboo nuclear-averse]] Japanese are forced to admit that fighting the BETA with weapons of mass destruction is safer and more effective than using conventional forces. In the backstory, the US stopped a BETA orbital drop into Canada cold by nuking the landing site, and [[spoiler:they are revealed to have planted a column of nuclear mines in Alaska from the Arctic to the Pacific to ''split the state in half'' just in case the BETA ever cross the Bering Strait]].

* [[UsefulNotes/HarryTruman President Truman]] chose to utilize the Nuclear Option in the Air Force's de-urbanisation campaign before using it in the Allied campaign to occupy the Japanese home islands (first phase November 1945, Operation Olympic, part of the larger Operation Downfall). If all it did was start firestorms that would raze two of the four marginally important cities that it had proven impossible to set afire like the other 82 (87 including those four plus Kyoto, but Kyoto was taken off the list), at the cost of just four flights' worth of fuel and a few dozen men's wages instead of the fuel and bombs and pay for many thousands of planes and men, then that was an obvious saving - the USA would have as many bombs as it needed by November, so why not use these two now? But if the bombings convinced the Japanese that the USA was producing so many nuclear weapons that it could afford to waste two of these incredibly expensive superbombs on razing two cities of very marginal military value (given the virtual shutdown of the entire Japanese economy) and have enough to spare for the invasion, then that might convince the Japanese to surrender before the guaranteed-to-succeed-at-minimal-cost invasion even began. [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki It worked: all Japanese estimates of American A-Bomb productivity concurred that they would at least have the handful necessary to catastrophically undermine command-and-control of Japanese forces attempting to repel the American invasion, and some speculated (because their own programme was not sufficiently advanced to gauge this effectively) that the Americans might have many dozens or even hundreds of weapons within the next few months or even at that very moment.]]

* In ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato2199, the Type-3 Armor-piercing shells the titular starship uses are stated to be thermonuclear in nature during an [[WordOfGod interview with the Author]]. When you absolutely, positively got to blow the target to tiny pieces, accept no substitutes.

* ''VideoGame/BlazblueContinuumShift'': Nuking Kagutsuchi to the ground in revealed to be Kokonoe's last resort in response to the unleashing of [[PersonOfMassDestruction Mu-12]]. This is seen as being far worse than the numerous fantastical tools available to them - Hakumen, a warrior whose body is a suit of AnimatedArmor and whose sword can cut time itself, is livid that she would even think of this option and Kokonoe's right-hand man doesn't try and argue back to him.

* The flash game Exmortis 2 has a nuke being dropped in the midst of an invading horde of demons, in the middle of the USA. It doesn't stop them at all, but it proves to everyone how truly fucked they are.

* ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' uses a nuke to split an asteroid in half. Falls under Nuclear Option rather than NukeExMachina because they're using a nuke to provide what nukes actually provide -- namely a very large explosion. Still a research flub, though, because a nuclear explosion wouldn't have been ''big enough'' to do what it did in the movie.

* In the novel ''Literature/MonsterHunterInternational'' by ''Creator/LarryCorreia'', the antagonist, Lord Macado, is an ancient and powerful undead. He is seeking the Kumaresh Yar, an artifact of unimaginable power that can do things like control time. Macado's intent was to use it to conquer the world. When the protagonists face Macado in his hideout in some rural Alabama caves, the government puts a B-1 bomber armed with nuclear weapons on standby, just in case the mission failed. Trope was avoided in this case, as the protagonists ultimately succeeded in preventing Macado from getting obtaining Kumaresh Yar and defeated him without having to vaporize part of rural Alabama.

* In the novel ''Literature/MonsterHunterInternational'' by ''Creator/LarryCorreia'', the antagonist, Lord Macado, is an ancient and powerful undead. He is seeking the Kumaresh Yar, an artifact of unimaginable power that can do things like control time. Macado's intent was to use it to conquer the world. When the protagonists face Macado in his hideout in some rural Alabama caves, the government puts a B-1 bomber armed with nuclear weapons on standby, just in case the mission failed. Trope was subverted at least somewhat in this case, as the protagonists ultimately succeeded in preventing Macado from getting obtaining Kumaresh Yar and ultimately defeated him without having to vaporize part of rural Alabama.

* The Wiki/SCPFoundation has a [[BigBulkyBomb ten megaton nuclear warhead]] located under each one of their containment Sites. This is justified because if whatever they were containing got out, it'd be a FateWorseThanDeath for humanity as a whole.

* Colonel Stanislav Petrov very nearly came to this conclusion in late 1983, when he saw what looked like 5 [=ICBMs=] inbound to Moscow while on duty at an early-warning center. Fortunately, he was mistrustful of the newly-installed system (which was malfunctioning -- the satellites had picked up a rare reflection at just the right angle over the right portion of the US to spoof the IR signatures of launching [=ICBMs=]), [[OnlySaneMan and rational enough to realize that launching only five warheads as a first strike was suicidally foolish]]; otherwise, he might have deemed it a US first strike and would have alerted his superiors in the Soviet Union (at that point absolutely paranoid that the US was imminently planning such a sneak attack) who would have ordered a "counter" strike against the "attack"... the upshot of which is that we probably would be too busy being radioactive dust or having never been born to be reading Wiki/TVTropes right here and now. Petrov himself was neither punished nor rewarded for the incident. Though he found himself HauledBeforeASenateSubCommittee, it was concluded that he had acted properly and sensibly in the situation, but since the incident demonstrated several technical problems with the early warning system, and therefore was an embarrassment to his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for it, Petrov was ultimately just quietly transferred to a less important post and his story was not told until after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

* ''Genocidal Organ'', by Project ITOH. After a terrorist nuke destroys Sarajevo, a world used to thinking of nuclear weaponry as a PointlessDoomsdayDevice suddenly realised it was a viable military option.

** The Cosmic Era timeline has more than its share of nukes as well.
*** The conflict in ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeed Gundam SEED]]'' begins when a space colony is nuked, and late in the series a veritable swarm of nukes are deployed in an attempt to finish the job.
*** ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundamSeedDestiny Gundam SEED Destiny]]'' also features a ([[spoiler:completely ineffective]]) mass nuke attack on the PLANT space colonies.

* In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', "N2 mines" (the N2 stands for [[NuclearWeaponsTaboo Non Nuclear]]) are the weapons of last resort against the Angels. Of course, given that its a GiantRobot show, they're often completely ineffective, in order to show how awesome the Evas are in comparison.

** In ''Literature/CitizenOfTheGalaxy'', Free Trader ships routinely use missiles armed with 20-megaton nuclear warheads against SpacePirates for the simple reason there's no defense against their [[StunGuns paralysis beam]] other than destroying the pirate before it can fire, and a successful boarding means the enslavement of the entire crew. [[spoiler:At the end of the novel the protagonist Thorby, believing it absurd that a starship with its powerful reactor should be helpless against a paralysis beam, starts the development of what is implied to be DeflectorShields as a potential alternative to the nukes, but it's unknown how much it will take or if it will be successful at all]].

* ''Film/ArmyOfTheDead'' has a pack of crooks entering a zombie-overwhelmed Las Vegas to rob a casino vault of cash. They're on a clock as in 36 hours, the military is going to nuke the city to wipe out the zombie threat. Which gets complicated when [[spoiler: the government moves up the timetable a full day and they have 90 minutes to get out of the city before the nuke hits]].

*** Also, they send everything they've got against the city, a futuristic dome created by ComicBook/TheMaker and which had already destroyed Berlin. But they resisted it, and the Maker blows up all of Washington DC as a counter attack.

-->Notes: One would think that putting SCP-682 in the epicenter of an explosion that can cause third-degree burns at a distance of 300 km is a good idea, but as long as there are odds of survival we simply cannot go through with it. Yes, it's a goddamn nuke, but if 682 [[FromASingleCell survives]] and [[AdaptiveAbility adapts]] we'd be boned beyond belief. [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure O5-█]]

* Equipping a couple of AttackDrone spacecraft with nuclear warheads and hiding those in a ZergRush of disposal fighters turns out to be a terrifically effective strategy in ''Literature/{{Chrysalis}}''. So much so, the Terran -- [[SoleSurvivor the last remaining]] [[BrainUploading human consciousness]] -- continues to use it in his war against a highly advanced alien civilization even after he reverse engineers more advanced alien technology.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' there's a FridgeLogic instance on disc 2: the use of the NuclearOption could have theoretically stopped the Gazel Ministry from using the Gaetia Key, had a sufficiently large electromagnetic pulse been detonated within range of their satellite. The characters' not even ''considering'' it, and instead using the missiles to spread curative nanomachines, led in part to a ZombieApocalypse in effect. This also qualifies as irony, seeing how one of the major ''past'' apocalypses was the nuclear war mentioned in NukeEm, from which the missiles remained.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' there's a FridgeLogic instance on disc 2: the use of the NuclearOption could have theoretically stopped the Gazel Ministry from using the Gaetia Key had a sufficiently large electromagnetic pulse been detonated within range of their satellite, and the characters' not even ''considering'' it, and instead using the missiles to spread curative nanomachines, led to a ZombieApocalypse. This also qualifies as irony seeing how one of the major ''past'' apocalypses was the nuclear war mentioned in NukeEm from which the missiles remain.

[[folder: Films -- Animation]]