Nuke 'em

"Soon your base will glow like the sun!"

Adam: Let's go; there's a nuke. Just telling you again.
Herman: That's what they do to everything; it didn't work in Independence Day.

— Lazer Team

When faced with a Monster of the Week, military commanders show an unhealthy urge to move right up to the (current) Final Option (or the local equivalent) when the monster can't be killed with bullets. They never stop to consider using something else in their arsenal that's a bit more powerful than a rifle, but won't cause as much collateral damage as a tactical-yield nuclear bomb. It's all or nothing. If hand-held guns didn't do the trick, forget artillery, tanks, bunker-busters, fuel-air explosives, chemical or biological agents, just get the nukes.

The heroes will probably object to this, only to be told that there's no time to "study the monster", it has to be taken out now (along with every other living thing inside a radius of five kilometers) before it gets bigger and destroys more things!

From there, it becomes a race to see if the good-guy scientists can find the monster's Achilles' Heel or get the Forgotten Superweapon back online before the Army gets its approval to start lobbing warheads. Of course, if the Army wins the race, it's likely that the nukes will either do nothing, or make things much, much worse, making the heroes the last hope.

As such, note that Nuke Em is only when using nukes is a bad idea, either because it's clearly overkill or it's likely to backfire. If it's a well-considered and reasonable choice given the situation, then it's the Nuclear Option. Sometimes exactly which trope the planned nuking falls under may be debated In-Universe.

Manga and anime is mostly immune to this, due to the Nuclear Weapons Taboo. In fact, expect the opposite to be true: that even if it's proven that nothing but a nuke would work, there will be extreme resistance to the idea. Darker and Edgier such stories may even play this straight, of those responsible for finally pressing the button considering everything up to ritual suicide as a result of guilt.

Very common in Science Is Bad stories and usually involves a General Ripper (in fact, the Trope Namer for General Ripper made this his signature). A popular way of ruining someone's day with Death from Above. Related to the Idiot Ball, depending on the size of the strike.

Related to Deus ex Nukina if the nuking is being used in a situation where it should be obvious that it realistically wouldn't have any effect, fallout and massive collateral damage aside. For the biological weapon equivalent, see Biological Weapons Solve Everything.

If you happen to be playing a video game, and you're directly responsible for launching it, it's a You Nuke 'Em situation.

See also: Five Rounds Rapid, Immune to Bullets, Armies Are Evil, and Radiation-Immune Mutants. Not related to the incredibly egotistic alien-slaughterer of the same name.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In 7 Seeds, the Fuji Ship during the Minor Heat arc is basically an armoury stacked to the roof with guns, rifles, revolvers, anything that shoots bullets. Like the other Fuji shelters, it was built to sustain over time and the meteor impact, housing a big number of people to keep them safe. The ship did have another purpose, though, which is this trope! If the people on the ship thought that things were absolutely hopeless and there was no chance of recovery, they were to activate the rockets on the ship. These rockets, which included one nuclear warhead, were to be shot out and rain all over Japan, killing everyone. This sequence would also start the self-destruct sequence of the ship, sealing all exits and exploding after the rockets were launched with a 24-hour span of time after the activation of this sequence. Needless to say, the plot of the Minor Heat arc is to prevent this from happening.
• Bleach has Soi Fon of all people pulling this as Bankai. Naturally, she doesn't like its nature. There's also the Kidou Cannon from the first movie.
• In Code Geass, Britannia decides to go with nuking things as soon as they get them. They decide to give the first one to Suzaku, who really doesn't want to do it, but he ends up doing it anyway. Schneizel takes this to the logical conclusion of nuking every major city in the world to achieve world peace.
• In the Digimon Adventure movie Our War Game!, the film's Big Bad Diablomon/Diaboromon hacks into the Pentagon and fires a nuclear-equipped LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM at Tokyo. The only reason why the protagonists aren't nuked into oblivion is that Omnimon manages to take out the Big Bad with about a second left until the nuke would have been set off.
• Dog Soldier: Zardoz is willing to nuke Tokyo, while Muammar Gaddafi plans to use a massively powerful nuke on the West.
• Happens in Getter Robo Go, after Shin Getter Robo goes berserk they various governments make several attempts to try and stop it, eventually resorting to a nuclear strike. The machine ends up grabbing the missile and combining with it.
• Gundam:
  • Nukes were the first weapons deployed in the One Year War of Mobile Suit Gundam, by both Zeon and the Earth Federation. The Antarctic Treaty banning nukes (and biological/chemical weapons too) came about because before either side knew it, nearly half the human population had been wiped out in the space of a few weeks.
  • Nukes show up again in Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack as Londo Bell is forced to take up a bunch of nuclear missiles to stop Axis from falling. However, Neo Zeon steals most of them to shove into Axis, forcing Londo Bell to use what's left.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, the Earth Federation develops the Gundam GP02A "Physalis", designed for the express purpose of tactical strikes; it's armed with a bazooka that launches nuclear warheads and a massive shield packed with radiators to help it weather the shockwaves and heat generated by the nuke. Zeon remnants steal the Physalis and use it to attack the Federation's naval review as part of their master plan: a Colony Drop on North America.
  • Nukes pop up again in full force in Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam, when the Jupiter Empire invades the Earth Sphere. Crux Dogatie dismisses claims of violating the Antarctic Treaty by saying that Jupiter never signed it. Dogatie is also using nukes because he's explicitly trying to inflict as much environmental damage as possible to Earth; he wanted the planet to be a dead rock. The Crossbone Vanguard uses their own tactical nuclear weapons against the Jovian forces, due mostly to the Godzilla Threshold having been crossed in their opinion.
  • ∀ Gundam expressly defies the Nuclear Weapons Taboo, with Militia forces uncovering a stockpile of warheads left over from the Dark History. The Moonrace tries to warn them about how dangerous the warheads are, but the Militia doesn't heed the warning until after they accidentally detonated one. Afterwards, Loran carries the remaining nukes in the Turn A's chest silos for several episodes, eventually using them to destroy a runaway space station before it can fall on Earth.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, nuking ZAFT is Blue Cosmos leaders Muruta Azrael and Lord Djibril's first response. ZAFT creates devices like the Neutron Jammer and Neutron Stampeder to make sure that it can't happen again. The Neutron Jammer inhibits nuclear reactions from taking place, and is ZAFT's primary defense during SEED. Since the Blue Cosmos gets its hands on Neutron Jammer Canceller technology late in the war^note Technology ZAFT had invented, because Neutron Jammers don't have an "off" switch and their own Doomsday Device (GENESIS, designed to wipe out all life on Earth) needed nuclear fission to function., nukes become a viable weapon again. In the aftermath of the war, ZAFT know that mere illegality won't keep N-Jammer Cancellers from being used again someday. So they develop a much nastier defense in the form of the Neutron Stampeder, which forces any nuclear warhead within its area of effect to detonate. Thus, when Blue Cosmos attempts a preemptive nuclear strike early in SEED Destiny, the Stampeder is activated, and the nuclear-armed fleet is forced to nuke itself.
• In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, because of the "Thirteen Day War" that occurred centuries before the canon timeline, which nearly exterminated the human race, nuclear weapons on planets were considered a taboo. Still doesn't mean none are willing nuke their own planets just because.
• The Macross series are an exception to the Nuclear Weapons Taboo, although its reaction weaponry isn't nuclear per se — it's an annihilation weapon, that is, an antimatter charge (and is itself eventually surpassed in power by dimension/fold weapons, which warp spacetime itself):
  • Super Dimension Fortress Macross: The invading Zentraedi are stunned that humanity has nuclear weapons because "Reaction Weapons" are Lost Technology to them. However, mankind doesn't actually use them until the final battle against the 117th Main Fleet, which, considering said fleet had just annihilated most of the Earth's surface through a massive orbital bombardment, probably qualifies as having crossed the Godzilla Threshold. It's notably the only time in the franchise the use of nukes is done without any kind of debate as to whether it's appropriate.
  • Macross Zero: The propelling force of the final episode's bizarre ending is that, just after the hero has used The Power of Love to subdue the Bird Human controlled by his girlfriend, the navy launches nukes and makes everything worse. Though, admittedly, every other ship with smaller weapons had been wiped out in the few previous minutes and they had no idea the Bird Human was not a threat anymore (the Destroid Monster with the nukes came out six seconds after the Bird Human was calmed down and, given the known situation, fired before anyone could realize what had happened).
  • Macross 7: Lampshade hung in that, for all that it's implied that nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort (Earth Command authorizing their use is seen as a big thing), every ship in the fleet seems to have unlimited stores of them (probably because the Protodeviln ship commanding their enemies is just that tough). At one point, Basara even exclaims "Reaction weapons! Reaction Weapons! Any time something goes wrong, is that the only solution you have?!"
  • Macross Frontier shows that even chronically redshirted NUNS (New United Nations Spacey) pilots could be pretty effective when armed with the stuff. Of course, arming everyone with such weapons means that the NUNS forces on board the Frontier are reaching the end of their rope, as the Vajra have managed to adapt to everything else (and, eventually, adapt to reaction warheads too...).
  • The Robotech adaptation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross also features judicious use of nuclear weapons and their 'reaction' upgrades, here called 'reflex weapons'.
• An amusing case in Neon Genesis Evangelion. The army do try almost everything in their arsenal before resorting to N2 mines, and when they fail decide that giant human-shaped robots are the best bet.
  • "Believing a giant human shaped robot is the best bet" only occurs after the first two episodes at least: based on the conversation with Gendo Ikari after expending their N2 mines, their thought process was more towards "we've used all of our strongest options. Let's see your inferior robot do better". As Nerv shows them, yes, they can do better... and since, the army asks for Evangelion intervention with haste every other time an Angel appears. "Eva 'em"?
  • Another reason why the N2 mines aren't used is because they'd incapacitate the Angel... and drastically alter the ground around it (the characters remark on redrawing the map more than once). Contrast the Evas, who at most will level a part of the (already submerged) city.

Comic Books

• In the Armor Wars storyline in Iron Man, Corrupt Corporate Executive Edwin Cord constructs the Firepower suit for a military contract. Among its many armaments is a low-yield nuclear missile named the Terminax, which is ultimately used to destroy the Silver Centurion armor. Cord later blackmails the military into keeping Firepower for himself by threatening to tell the press that this nuclear-armed battlesuit was intended for riot control. The "new" Iron Man is able to tear Firepower apart, though, and shut down another Terminax before it can destroy the Stark Enterprises campus.
• Marvel Boy depicts its titular superhero (despite his prodigious combat-oriented abilities) as wiping out a group of enemy agents by simply flying over their base and dropping a nuclear weapon on them.
• In The Phantom Zone, General Zod's band carry out a False Flag Operation by destroying all of Earth's communications and espionage satellites. Rather than verifying if they are indeed under attack when their satellites are shut down, both Americans and Russians opt for launching their warheads immediately.
• Preacher: When the Saint of Killers obviously isn't falling to the forces of Starr's soldiers, Starr declares the battle lost and drops a nuke, wiping out the rest of his troops. Then the Saint emerges from the blast site. His only words? "Not enough gun."
• Teen Titans villain Cheshire destroys Qurac with a nuclear explosive to prove that she isn't bluffing about having nukes or being willing to use them. It gets brought up from time to time, but nobody really cares about the country itself being gone — and this was the reason why she chose Qurac, because she knew if most people tried to call her a monster because of it, they would be reminded that she destroyed a country considered to be the terrorist capital of the world, and that they secretly may have been glad she did it.
• Wonder Woman (1942): The Green Geni are not as negativity effected by nuclear radiation as humans, and are a group of xenophobic homicidal interstellar criminals who like to find worlds bearing life and nuke them from orbit as entertainment.

Fan Works

• Adoption Nightmare: What do you think when an annoying AI Civilization keeps on bugging you? Brina suggests this trope after taking the cities that are in anarchy.
• In Avenger of Steel, Natasha observes that this has been the World Security Council's recommended response to the last four major disasters (Loki's invasion, Zod's attempted terraforming, the Dark Elves' assault and the attack of Ao Shun the dragon), and each time, it's been more practical to let the Avengers handle things.
• In Conquest of the Emperor: The World of Naruto, the Grand Empire somewhat does this to Madara and his Zetsus, but it is implied that they first had someone check to see what the impact of the fallout would be. Their plan for the effects of the fallout makes it this trope.
• In the TRON fic The Contingency, Alan Bradley solves the entire situation by walking right up to Clu, delivering a very firmly worded Kirk Summation, and then pointing out that if he and Flynn do not get off the Grid alive, Lora is standing by, prepared to reformat the entire hard drive, wiping out every Program and Iso on it. Clu, realizing that Tron's User is even less inclined to bluff than Tron was, lets them all go.
• A Crown of Stars: Jinnai's reaction to the taking of his fleet is trying to turn Buenos Aires and a chunk of Argentina into a smoking crater by launching dozens of nukes.
• In the Deva Series, the Americans use a pair of SLBMs to obliterate a massive swarm of Seeds that were heading for either New York or London. Even though nothing else significant was harmed — middle of the ocean, and all — Hayate was not happy, since she feels that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch now for someone to think to launch a barrage of nukes at Al Hanthis... which would obliterate Cairo in the process. Also, the Al Hantheans are utterly horrified once they learn exactly how nuclear weapons work. It is probably worth noting that there is In-Universe debate as to whether this was Nuke Em or Nuclear Option; it did work, and Yussef and Maunders don't consider it an overreaction. Yussef notes that point defences now make anything short of a nuclear Macross Missile Massacre worthless against Al Hanthis and would rather not use another if possible, but is mentally prepared to do so if all the chips are down, unlike Hayate who absolutely refuses to consider it.
• Discord's plan to destroy humanity in Diaries of a Madman involves this. It works, but not quite well enough for his goals...
• An End to All Things: Someone nukes the town in the opening act, according to Okazaki's memories. Or will nuke the town, the story has a measure of Anachronic Order with regards to that event.
• Eugenesis notes that a lot of Cybertron's surface has been nuked over the course of the war. Since its inhabitants are robots, it's not as dangerous for them as it would be for most lifeforms, but most of the nuked cities are long abandoned anyway.
• Evangelion 303: At least one of the members of the Senate Subcommittee overseeing the Black Project Evangelion maintains that the best way to deal with Seele was nuking the whole country where they were hiding in lieu of building Evangelions to launch a pre-emptive targeted raid.
• Fallout: Equestria: Need to get rid of the queen of a brutally pragmatic Hive Mind and the Zebra Necronomicon at the same time? Blow both of them to atoms with the same balefire bomb! It actually does work.
• Frozen Hearts (Red Witch): Reaching the peak of his Villainous Breakdown, Barton eventually decides to fire a nuclear missile right onto Candy Kingdom out of spite. Fortunately, Simon and Betty managed to stop the nuke before that can happen.
• Hail to the King (Thuktun Flishithy): Shamshel is hit with an N2 mine instead of Sachiel in this story. Godzilla is also hit with one when he goes on his literal Roaring Rampage of Rescue. It doesn't even slow his stride.
• In Mr. Evil's Ben 10 fanfiction Hero High: Sphinx Academy, the Head of the Tempus Family questions why they can't just Nuke the city school they know the Big Bad to be in. Her assistants reveal that from the structural design he already re-enforced the school to protected it against such an attack.
• The climax of Book Three of The Last Son ironically begins and ends because of this trope. After General Zod provokes the North Korean diplomat during a United Nations meeting, North Korea launches a salvo of nukes at Battle Station Sentrius in paranoia. Naturally, after Sentrius neutralizes them and pays them in kind, Zod uses this as an excuse to declare Earth as a whole hostile and take over. Superman and his allies are forced to lure Zod into a trap to depower him, but at the same time General Lassider of S.H.I.E.L.D (also a member of Cadmus working to undermine the heroes) launches a Kryptonite-loaded nuke to kill Zod, Superman, and everyone else still around regarding them as "acceptable losses". They're forced to open a Phantom Zone singularity to absorb the blast and avoid major damage.
• Shown in Leviathan (Thuktun Flishithy), the remake of Hail to the King (Thuktun Flishithy) above. Nuclear weapons were used against Godzilla in the past, and Israfel is hit with an N2 mine.
• The Marionette tries to listen to his musicbox: The Marionette's response to Balloon Boy laughing to the tune of the music box is to throw a nuclear bomb at him, resulting in an Everything Explodes Ending.
• In Project Tatterdemalion, the top authorities involved initially wanted to nuke the facility after the Hollows began rampaging. Bad idea. As Juushirou explains, heat and radiation kill a lot of things, but only if they're contained long enough. If the Hollow virus was sporific, all nuking the facility would've done is pop open the box the Hollows were kept in and spread still-infectious Hollow bits up into the jetstream, dooming the world... and infecting the spaceports. And as Juushirou said, all they knew for certain was 'Alien,' and 'Dangerous,' so it could've indeed been sporific, or close enough for an apocalypse.
• Rocketship Voyager: The Space Marines have no problem hurling micratomic grenades about when they're supposed to be on a rescue mission, but B'Elanna Torres has to talk them out of detonating an A-rocket too near Voyager, as the radiation would be trapped by the electromagnetic field the ship uses to ward off cosmic radiation.
• In Shinji and Warhammer40k, when Gendo asks Kaji how many UN warheads, dirty (nuclear) bombs or otherwise, are pointed at Tokyo-3 in case Misato and Risuko's plan against Iruel fails, Kaji's reply...namely, all of them, meets with his satisfaction.
• Defied in Tarkin's Fist. The Empire annihilates the Earth's nuclear arsenal in a preemptive strike designed to prevent the use of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. The resulting Empire-Earth War is largely conventional.
• Thousand Shinji: Nukes are used all over the place to finish an enemy or Nerv itself.
• In the prologue of A Young Girl's Delinquency Record, Tanya uses the dangerously unstable Elenium Type 95 as a nuclear hand grenade and levels the city of Brest with it.
• Zero 2: A Revision: When Shaun attempts to head to Little Edo to gather up reinforcements in hopes of gathering a resistance against the Digimon Emperor, the entire population of Little Edo ends up getting brainwashed along with a "surprise" should he manage to survive for two hours: a freakin nuclear warhead that the Emperor chucks towards Little Edo to prevent The Ace from interfering with his plans. Had Davis and (Agumon) not arrived in time, Shaun would have been outright obliterated by it.

Films — Animation

• In The Iron Giant, when the army's biggest guns do not faze the titular Giant, Agent Mansley reminds General Rogard that they have something else: the Bomb. The general is frightened by the suggestion, but orders an offshore submarine to arm a missile. In this case, the Four-Star Badass Rogard is more reasonable than the hotheaded civilian Mansley: Rogard is the one who commands the army to stand down and stop the attack. Mansley snatches the radio and shrieks the order to launch the missile anyway, a move that is unnecessary and stupid.
  • It is not necessary because Hogarth has pacified the Giant and stopped its rampage. It is not a threat.
  • It is stupid because the missile is aimed at the spot they are standing: a town full of innocent people.
  • Mansley, who exemplifies the idiotic side of The '50s Cold War paranoia, does not seem to appreciate how destructive the Bomb is: he suggests they can survive if they Duck and Cover. When Rogard tells him he is Too Dumb to Live, he looks ready to cry.
    Rogard: That missile is targeted to the Giant's current position! [furious] Where's the Giant, Mansley?!
    Mansley: Wh— [looks over his shoulder at the Giant standing nearby] Oh. [winces] We... We can duck and cover! There's a fallout shelter right there—
    Rogard: There's no way to survive this, you idiot!
    Mansley: You mean...we're all going to-
    Rogard: To DIE, Mansley. For our country.
    Mansley: Screw our country! I wanna live! [jumps into a Jeep and tries to drive off before crashing into the Giant's metal hand]
  • In a final irony, the warhead could not kill the Giant anyway.
• In Monsters vs. Aliens, the robot probe is found to be indestructible, and the President wants to simply launch all the nuclear missiles on him when General Monger stops him.

Films — Live-Action

• The Abyss: While suffering from paranoia, Coffey decides to destroy the aliens by sending down an armed nuclear warhead.
• Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is a weird case. The "Predalien" has already managed to overrun the entire town with its more classically styled offspring. The military solution, after the recon unit sent in is quickly butchered? Nuke the town and tell those still alive to congregate in the center of the town for an airlift, so as to keep the aliens from spreading out. While this decision is completely justified given the circumstances, it's strange that they settle for that option so fast, given how little information they have on the threat.
• Army of the Dead: The US government ultimately decides to nuke a walled-off zombie-infested Las Vegas. What makes it cross into "Nuke 'em" territory is how cartoonishly gung-ho the US President seems to be, not least for wanting it to happen on July 4th for extremely dubious "patriotic fireworks" reasons.
• In The Avengers (2012), the World Security Council decides that the Avengers are going to lose the final battle and decide to just nuke Manhattan Island (along with all its inhabitants) to disrupt the wormhole through which the Chitauri army is invading. Tony winds up nearly sacrificing himself to guide the nuke into space and chuck it at the alien ship instead. And their decision makes more sense after the reveal in Captain America: The Winter Soldier that the Council is controlled by Hydra. Needless to say, neither Nick Fury nor any of the Avengers were particularly impressed by their stellar display of competence.
  Fury: I realize that the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it.
• In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, when air-to-air missiles fail to harm Doomsday, the military immediately suggests that they nuke it once Supes has moved the fight into the upper atmosphere. The President agrees, over the objections of the secretary of defense. Well, that escalated quickly. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
• Extended in Evolution (2001), but it uses napalm. An officer does suggest using nukes, only for the governor to firmly state that no one is going to drop an H-bomb on his state, so the army gets napalm to destroy a lifeform, just after the protagonist discovers that a smaller sample expands by many times after being touched by fire. They tell the army, they attack anyway, and the monster becomes about a million times bigger. Then the scientists kill it with shampoo.
• Godzilla:
  • In King Kong vs. Godzilla the military actually seriously considers nuking Kong. Luckily, the heroes manage to find an alternative. This proposal only appears in the English version, though.
  • In The Return of Godzilla, not only does nuking him not work, it makes him stronger. Nukes against Godzilla. Smart thinking, guys. That's like using a flamethrower against the Human Torch.
  • Variation in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, present-day Japan decides to nuke the Godzillasaurus that would've become Godzilla (who is now at the bottom of the Bering Sea) so that he can fight King Ghidorah. Subverted in that, he's already been nuked/mutated...in a sense (by absorbing the radiation from all the sunken nuclear subs already present in the area) and nuking him... again... only makes him bigger and far more powerful than before.
  • It should be noted that Godzilla can die from too much radiation (as seen in the film Godzilla vs. Destoroyah). The only problem is that doing so causes him to go into a nuclear meltdown which would result in destroying all life on earth and reducing the earth to a wasteland. Unless you have an adolescent Godzilla (i.e., Junior) around to absorb the radiation and reach his adult form.
  • Shin Godzilla has the US Army prepare to nuke Godzilla if the Japanese military fails to stop him. In the end, the heroes manage to freeze Godzilla over and end his rampage, but the US Army is closely watching him, prepared to push the big red button and let the nukes fly at the slightest indication that he is awakening.
  • In Godzilla (2014), Serizawa explains that at least some Pacific nuclear tests were not tests, but attempts to nuke the titular monster, which obviously failed at best or made him even stronger at worst. In the present day, Admiral Stenz eventually (keyword) intends to try and eliminate all three of the rampaging monsters with nuclear warheads, despite frantic cautioning from the scientists that nukes are more likely to make the situation even worse since they failed to kill just one monster before and since the monsters grow stronger by feeding on radiation; but Stenz' plan ends up backfiring when the female MUTO steals two warheads from a train, and the male MUTO steals the third one after it has been armed, and takes it to the centre of San Francisco.
• In Iron Sky, the American space battleship U.S.S. George W. Bush, loaded to the brim with nukes, takes to the Moon under the command of one Vivian Wagner, but not to battle the Moon Nazis as such. No, she wants to nuke the new Nazi Führer Klaus Adler for only almost becoming her lover. It's just mere coincidence that Adler launches his invasion on Earth right then.
• In Quantum Apocalypse, the Russian government nukes the Poles in order to knock Earth off its orbit in the hopes of getting it away from the strangelet threatening to destroy it. Not only does the plan not work, the explosions cause tsunamis that destroy New York City.
• The Return of the Living Dead: They nuke the zombies (and all the main characters in the process), but, of course, that just causes the zombification juice to re-enter the atmosphere and create more zombies. Good going, dumbasses.
• In RoboCop (1987), this trope is the premise of an in-universe children's board game. 'Get them before they get you... Nukem!' More seriously, the white government of the South African city-state of Pretoria threatens to use a 3-megaton neutron bomb as its last line of defense.
• In Stargate, Colonel O'Neil secretly brings a nuke through the Stargate with the team on its very first exploration mission. His orders? Nuke the place if there's any sign of hostiles. They end up using the nuke to kill Ra.
• Syfy Channel Original Movie:
  • In Baal Lord Of Storms, the military considers nuking a storm front. While it's clearly the wrong option, there's a techno-babble reason given (something to do with disrupting electro-magnetic waves) to make it merely a bad idea and not simply a completely cracked-out-of-their-mind idea. Ironically, it actually helps by weakening Baal enough for El, the God the heroes have summoned to defeat him.
  • In Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, the Evil Army suggests nuking the eponymous sea monsters, to the horror of the scientists. Think of the damaged ecosystem! The risk to the population! The tsunamis! (Much of which could have been avoided by not luring these monsters into shallow water near populated areas like the scientists propose.) No mention is made of using weapons designed to destroy underwater targets like depth charges or anti-submarine missiles.

Literature

• Subverted in the book and the 1971 film version of The Andromeda Strain. The titular extraterrestrial organism (a single-celled, quasi-crystalline life form) mutates as it's exposed to ionizing radiation - at a rather sedate rate under atmospheric UV exposure, extremely rapidly with more powerful sources. Of course, the secure biohazard laboratory where this bug is being studied is equipped with a thermonuclear device for "terminal sterilization" in case of contamination, and the lab becomes contaminated when the organism mutates to a form that degrades organic polymers, thus compromising the synthetic rubber gaskets and hatch seals throughout the lab. Failsafe Failure ensues. The greatest Irony in all that was that with mutation into the "rubber-eating" form the organism stopped being dangerous to humans (which was just an unfortunate coincidence anyway), but subjecting it to the radiation of a nuclear blast might mutate it into something even more horrific.
• Attempted in Touch, as a way of dealing with an otherworldly horror from before the dawn of man. It only mostly fails.
• Believe it or not, there's actually a spell to do this in The Inheritance Cycle. Of course it's never actually called that, because this is a Medieval Fantasy setting where most people are shocked to find out the earth is round, but the effects it has are all exactly the same, right down to the radioactive fallout, or "invisible poison" as it gets called, (though there are spells to get rid of that too). It's not used much because of the collateral damage, and the fact that the user is the one whose atoms get split to make the boom. The two times it was used, both users had already gone insane: once before the series started, when a Rider named Thuviel saw his dragon killed in Galbatorix's purge, rendering the island of Vroengard uninhabitable in the process; the second was Galbatorix himself, after a Care-Bear Stare drives him to kill himself in The Final Battle. And what are the words to this spell? "Waíse Néiat." Be Not.
• This trope is the final solution to the ensuing Hell on Earth in John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming. It almost doesn't work.
• In Day by Day Armageddon, the US Government decides to nuke most of the major US cities due to the spread of zombies getting out of hand. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix things, because the zombies who weren't caught in the nuke blasts absorbed the radiation and it somehow turned them from slow zombies into fast zombies. Obviously, these people have not read The Zombie Survival Guide, which specifically argues against this (for pretty much this very same reason).
• Mentioned in passing in The Dresden Files. Donald Morgan mentions having killed a Skinwalker, a quasi-divine being with a portfolio of pain, torture and despair, he fought into the American Southwest in The '50s by luring it to the site of an atomic bomb test and teleporting out a split second before detonation.
• Timeline-191 has World War II turn into a nuclear (though they're called Superbombs in this timeline) conflict as more and more nations gain them. First the Germans nuke Petrograd to force Russia to surrender. They don't, so they turn around at try the same on Paris. That succeeds and France pulls out of the war. Britain proceeds to nuke Hamburg, so Germany nukes Britain three times (Norwick, London, and Brighton) in response. The CSA smuggles a shoddily-made bomb into Philadelphia, which still manages to cause a great deal of damage. In response, the USA nukes Newport News in attempt to assassinate Confederate president Jake Featherstone, which fails, and then later does the same to Charleston to strike a symbolic victory against their opponent. Ironically, the the Empire of Japan manages to avoid being nuked altogether.
• In the Australian satire Year of the Angry Rabbit, a landowner gets the army to use atomic mortars on his property because it's become infested with rabbits. This leads to giant radioactive rabbits rampaging across Australia.
• In Worldwar, the Race comes to Earth armed to the teeth, including a shipful of nukes. They open their invasion by detonating nukes in the upper atmosphere, hoping to knock out human electronics. Except this is World War II, and vacuum tubes are far more resistant to EMP than later technology. A lucky shot from the Dora cannon blows up the ship with the nukes, contaminating the entire area with radioactive material. Frustrated at humans resisting, the Race nukes Berlin and Washington and are very annoyed that this only increases the ferocity with which humanity fights back. Eventually, US, Nazi Germany, and USSR get nukes of their own and start using them against the Race. The only reason the Race is initially hesitant to use them is because they contaminate large swaths of land, and already severely limited commodity on Earth, as far as they're concerned (they're used to arid planets). But then they say "screw it" and start trying to out-nuke the humans in the hope that they give give up. Humans reply in kind and start nuking their own cities, occupied by the Race. By the end of the original tetralogy, the Race finally agrees to peace talks, dividing Earth into Race-controlled territory and the six remaining powers (US, Greater German Reich, USSR, UK, Japan, and Canada).
  • Come the Colonization trilogy, set twenty years later, someone ends up nuking a Race civilian transport, holding thousands of colonists. It's eventually discovered that the culprit was the US; when the Race finds out, they demand that the President allow them to destroy an American city in retaliation in order to avoid a full-scale war. He does, just before blowing his brains out. Then the Germans go to war again, despite repeated warning by the Race. Both Germany and Race-controlled Poland end up nuked to hell.
• Schooled in Magic: Splitting atoms is actually a pretty trivial spell, as Emily discovers in book four. Emily is very grateful that magical law allows her to protect her secrets after she has to nuke another necromancer.
• The Reckoners Trilogy: High Epics are those with at least one "Prime Invincibility," such as forcefields or a powerful Healing Factor, that renders them immune to conventional weapons. It's mentioned that it's extremely rare for even the most powerful Epics to be able to survive a nuke (or Obliteration going nuclear, which is more common in the post-apocalypse). Several European countries tried to handle High Epics by nuking the cities they were in, and if you put aside the horrific loss of innocent life it was working reasonably well... but they soon ran out of cities.

Live-Action TV

• Despite actor Bruce Boxleitner's self-penned nickname to his series character on Babylon 5, John Sheridan, who uses nuclear weapons no less than four times against seemingly unbeatable opponents and winning all four times, is an aversion to this trope, as he used nuclear weapons in important strategic methods under his authority. Boxleitner's use of the nickname in the commentary track for 'Thirdspace' makes the nickname all but official.
  • "Thirdspace" was probably the closest Sheridan ever got to this trope, as this particular use of a nuclear weapon had no tactical subtlety whatsoever (Sheridan carried the bomb himself and planted it on the thing to be destroyed, an idea even he realized was nuts), but it was still a reasonable option under the circumstances.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): The new series gleefully hurls nukes around with wild abandon. In the mini-series alone the Twelve Colonies are hit by thousands of nukes: Helo reports seeing six mushroom clouds just from the one area his Raptor has landed in on Caprica in the space of about an hour. Galactica itself withstands a direct hit from a nuclear missile, although it sustains heavy damage and more than 80 casualties. Pegasus was also nuked a couple of times while in dock during this time. Nukes are also later used to destroy a Cylon basestar and Gaius Baltar appropriates one, allegedly for his research but this is later used to blow up at least three of the refugee ships and kill more than 3,000 civilians. The high-point for the use of nukes is when Pegasus withstands no less than three nuclear hits at pointblank range and shrugs them off to inflict grievous damage on the attacking Cylon basestars with its guns. Nukes are later used to destroy the Cylon Resurrection Hub and in the stand-off between Galactica and the rebel basestar. In a moment of possible high irony, the Galactica finally reaches Earth (the first one) to find the planet irradiated by a nuclear war, which has left the planet uninhabitable. Finally, the Colonial Fleet uses all of its remaining nukes to destroy the Cylon Colony Ship (and most all of the Cylons) in the Grand Finale.
• Farscape: Does this twice, once in the first season in order to destroy Scorpius' Gammack Base (Though it isn't technically a nuke per se, the yield is similar), and again in the last season, where John creates a makeshift nuke to use as leverage in his plan.
• MacGyver (1985): In the pilot, the army plans to use a nuclear warhead to stop a chemical leak. In the end, Mac fixes it with chocolate.
• Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: A little downplayed in Episode 3. General Puckett takes to the idea of nuking Godzilla first and asking questions later once Lee, Keiko and Bill convince him that safeguarding the U.S.'s territories against an incursion by the Titan is worth redirecting their uranium supply into dealing with him (with the trio being unaware that Puckett would interpret their advice as "nuke Godzilla" instead of "lure Godzilla out for study"). Puckett not only all but goes behind the scientists' backs when arranging the nuclear strike against Godzilla, he also turns down the trio's subsequent pleas that they should wait to learn more about Godzilla before they resort to trying to kill him, justifying his hasty course of action by saying, "You wait to see what the enemy's gonna do, you've already lost". When Godzilla vanishes in the atomic blast and is presumed dead, Puckett turns to his jubilant men and he calls what they've done "magnificent" while sporting an unsettling grin, making him come a lot closer to playing this trope straight.
• Played for laughs in Monty Python's Flying Circus, when London gangster Dinsdale Piranha thinks (correctly, as it turns out) that he's being stalked by a gigantic hedgehog named Spiny Norman. Dinsdale somehow comes to the conclusion that Norman sleeps in a hangar at Luton Airport, and blows it up with a nuclear bomb that he had previously used to extort nightclub owners. We later see Norman in the episode's climax, suggesting that either Dinsdale was wrong about where he slept, or he's immune to nuclear weaponry.
• The Outer Limits (1995): This show likes to nuke them.
  • In "The Light Brigade", the titular human warship is hit by two nukes.
  • In "Trial by Fire", the US president tries to nuke the aliens who have splashed down in Earth's oceans.
• Revolution:
  • After allying with Randall and gaining a permanent source of power, Monroe manages to build a nuclear bomb and attempts to use it to destroy Atlanta and cripple the Georgia Federation. Fortunately, the protagonists stop this just in time ("The Song Remains the Same", "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia").
  • In the first season finale, Randall Flynn takes advantage of the power being turned back to fulfill his plan: to launch Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles at Philadelphia and Atlanta. He then shoots himself in the head after doing this. Then it turns out that he was working on behalf of the American government, which was hiding out in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for years. Now that Randall has completed his mission, the government is coming back into the USA to retake what's theirs.
• Saturday Night Live: Parodied this in the (are you ready?) "Attack of the Masturbating Zombies" sketch: a professor suggests dropping an atomic bomb on the town square, only to be told, "Professor, that's your solution for everything."
• Several Seven Days episodes involve nukes. One has an American nuclear silo launch a nuke at North Korea, resulting in a massive exchange between the two countries, wiping out North Korea and devastating the West Coast. In another episode, Fidel Castro launches old Soviet nukes at the US in retaliation for the death of his adopted son. Due to the limited range, they can only hit Miami. Most of the nukes are intercepted, but one hits the city. Naturally, given the nature of the show, these are all averted.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • This show will sometimes resort to this, with early seasons favoring the Five Rounds Rapid treatment of nukes (namely epic failure) to give the title object and title team justification for existence. There is one early case where a nuke is actually used to prevent them all from being sucked into a black hole.
  • Later seasons started using them more frequently, such as the Mark IX "Gatebuster", a naquadriah-enhanced warhead with a supposed yield of several gigatons^note For reference, the most powerful nuke ever actually detonated in reality was "merely" 50 megatons, which is roughly 100 times weaker than the Gatebuster. Of course, given that they were fighting the Ori in their last season, it's logical that they would bring their most powerful weapons to bear.
  • The Spin-Off Stargate Atlantis, on the other hand, practically giggles any time nukes are mentioned to the point where John Sheppard makes putting a nuke on the enemy ship his default anti-capital ship tactic, though he's more often than not justified in this (Wraith Hive Ships are quite large and for most of the series the only other weapons capable of reliably destroying them are the perpetually-in-short-supply Ancient drone weapons), and pretty much every application works as intended. Nukes are used on the first two Hive Ships sent to Atlantis, one flown into the Dart Bay, the other beamed on. Nukes are beamed onto two more Hive Ships. The Wraith are quick learners though, and find a way to jam Asgard beaming devices after this. The Genii use one to kill one of their own armies and their boss in a coup. Finally, Sheppard single-handedly flies an F-302 into the Dart Bay of a Super Hive Ship undetected and armed with a nuke.
    • Then there's the giant Horizon planetary attack missile launched against the Asuran homeworld, which carried six Mark IX warheads.
• Thumb Wrestling Federation: The Big Time can cause nuclear explosions simply by winding up and slamming his opponent to the mat. Yes, he's that strong.
• Years and Years: In the last days of his presidency, Donald Trump has the Chinese island of Hong Sha Dao nuked off the face of the earth. Later on, Leeds and Bristol are hit with dirty bombs as well.

Music

• Randy Newman's "Political Science" deconstructs and mocks this trope by suggesting the flimsiest, most frivolous excuses for nuking everyone and everything (except Australia).
• The topic of the Title Track from Massive Killing Capacity by Dismember.
• The ICP track "Bang, Pow, Boom!" is about a sentient version of this. A nuclear level, thinking explosion, that cleans out the scumbags and evildoers from the Dark Carnival when it gets crowded.
• The music video for Miike Snow's My Trigger is set during the Cold War. As in real life, both the USA and the USSR have nukes at their disposal, and both are severely tempted and pressured by their respective staff to press the Big Red Button. In the end neither one goes for it.

Pinballs

• Fully embraced by Sega Pinball's Starship Troopers. Not only are you awarded points for nuking planets, the game even has lanes labeled "Nuke", "Double Nuke", and "Super Nuke".

Tabletop Games

• Used intermittently in Warhammer 40,000.
  • Actual nuclear weapons are not prominent, being relegated to use by garrison forces for the most part. When a cosmic horror rears its head the three most favoured options are saturation orbital bombardment, Exterminatus or deploying the Grey Knights.
  • Weapons on the same or greater scale as nuclear weapons include: plasma torpedoes (200 meter inter-ship ordinance), engineered viruses (including the Worldkiller Virus,) Vortex weapons, and Cyclonic torpedoes (which burrow into a planet's crust and detonate in the mantle, causing widespread surface devastation.)
  • When it looks like a Space Marine force isn't going to be able to protect or take back a planet, it is their responsibility to blow the planet up before they leave. After all, if the Space Marines go up against something and can't win, it's very likely nothing can.
  • Let's talk a bit about the lovely Death Korps of Krieg, who subjected their own seditious homeworld to 500 years of "atomic cleansing".
• In Shadowrun, Ares Macrotechnology used a tactical nuke in an attempt to saturate Chicago's astral plane with toxicity and kill the hordes of bug spirits that ravaged the city. Fortunately the bug spirits' own energy-shield trapped the physical and metaphysical blast inside the bugs' nest, preventing its full impact from reducing Chicago to a radioactive ruin. You gotta give props to FASA: it takes nerve to nuke your game company's own hometown. Their own headquarters, as a matter of fact.
• Averted in GDW's cold war tactical games like Harpoon and Air Strike which focused on conventional weapons. For a nuclear variant the game designers recommended dousing the game in lighter fluid and setting it on fire.
• Mekton has rules for nuclear weapons, with the degree to which you are screwed being directly proportional to how close you are to the centre of the blast. If you're within the basic blast radius, you automatically die unless you have a really good excuse. Outside of that, you're simply very likely to die. It also gives some key rules about using them so as not to destroy the game, just the battlefield, such as "Only drop them to establish a scenario, rather than as a cheap Draw button" and "if you must drop it during the fight, do so in the centre of the battlefield." (Just to reinforce this, the "nuclear" upgrade for missiles and bullets is very expensive.) Supernovas use the same rules, although the rules state that you just treat the hex you're in as ground zero and quit whining — the entire system is screwed, why should you be immune unless you're flying an Excessive Scale Humongous Mecha that could stomp Cthulhu underfoot?
• In Eclipse Phase many nations resorted to nukes, orbital kinetic strikes, and antimatter bombs to try and halt the TITANs during the Fall. The end result was the death of 90% of humanity and a mass exodus from earth. Not an uncommon modus operandi for Firewall either.
• Toon supplement Tooniversal Tour Guide. In Atomic Monster Theater, Colonel Rock Daring's policy towards giant monsters is literally "Nuke 'em!''
• Car Wars said "Using a nuke ends the game". The standard play maps used were 2x3 feet or so, and the smallest available nuke would destroy five maps in all directions, damage which no car would survive.
• Nukes, along with biological and chemical weapons, are supposed to be banned by the Ares Conventions of BattleTech. The presence of even a single nuclear weapon was cause for mass panic and alarm during the times of the Succession Wars. Then came the Word of Blake, who decided that if they couldn't have the Inner Sphere, no one could; the Word proceeded to deploy and use more nuclear weapons in fifteen years than the universe had in three hundred, to the point of developing the most lethal of joke characters, an Urbanmech carrying a tactical nuclear missile launcher.
• Much like the Battletech example above, this is decidedly not an option allowed by The Third Imperium in Traveller to its constituent or client planets. Anyone using nukes on anyone else within reach of the Imperium, for whatever reason, can expect a very unfriendly and supremely unpleasant visit from the Imperial military, potentially including getting a taste of their own nuclear medicine.

Video Games

• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift reveals that Kokonoe keeps a fully loaded silo in range of her lab just in case she needs a quick solution to Yuuki Terumi or whatever he may be cooking up this week. Hakumen (who saw a nuke strike against the Black Beast do jack-shit to it) is understandably horrified when he finds out.
• Borderlands 2:
  • One of Axton's skills lets him set off a mini-nuke when deploying his SABRE turret (with its own cooldown).
  • The Nukem rocket launcher is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Don't fire at anything too close to yourself.
• The Carronade or Hex Cannon in Breath of Fire IV is depicted as a particularly (and literally) nightmare-inducing magical thermonuclear weapon equivalent. The really scary thing is in the power source and in the ammo; the power source is a princess who is converted into an artificial Endless so that she can be perpetually tortured, whilst the ammo consists of people with a close connection to the target being literally tortured to the point of a mental breakdown and then subjected to human sacrifice. It's the pain, rage, and suffering that ends up being the "warhead".
  • Depicted originally as a plot-point in a town that was Hex Nuked, including literal Hex Decontamination Teams. Even with this, it is stated will take many years for the hexed city to recover — which has had to be evacuated of residents.
  • Depicted most tragically in Fou-lu's storyline.^note Peasant girl meets dragon-god. Peasant girl falls in love with dragon-god. Peasant girl is taken prisoner by empire dragon-god founded 600 years ago, tortured horribly, and ultimately used as Tactical Thermonuclear Peasant in attempt to kill dragon-god. Dragon-god survives (barely) and goes completely bugfuck nuts when he realizes who was used as the ammo. Suffice it to say that it does not end well for The Empire.
• Civilization:
  • Every game in the main series features the late-game development of nuclear weapons (or "Planet Busters" in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri^note Though we should note they're more of a mid-game development in SMAC thanks to the future setting), which are by far the most devastating offensive units available, even despite attempted countermeasures like Bomb Shelter structures or the Strategic Defense Initiative national wonder. Problem is, using nukes causes severe diplomatic repercussions, and depending on the game can kick up a ton of pollution and/or advance global warming by a significant degree. Once the United Nations is founded, it's possible for civs to come together and ban the construction of nukes, though this notably does nothing to any pre-built atomic stockpiles.
  • Mahatma Gandhi has a reputation as a nuke-loving psycho, stemming from the incongruity of a famous pacifist boasting "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!" in Civ I (but not, as it turns out, due to an overflow glitch causing his aggression rating to "fall" from 1 to 255 with the adoption of democracy). Both players and developers have grown fond of the "Nuclear Gandhi" characterization, and thus later games have given him a tendency to build up a nuclear stockpile and bomb the hell out of anyone foolish enough to declare war on him.
• Command & Conquer:
  • Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series: Kane sure likes his nukes.
    • In Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Kane's discovery of Killian Qatar's apparent betrayal and alliance with GDI results in a slightly angry response. His subsequent orders are to, well...
    • In Command & Conquer: Renegade, Kane decides to nuke a small town just to eliminate the protagonist and his squad. Justified in that he just killed his way through a mansion filled with Nod's elite.
    • In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Kane, dissatisfied with General Vega (an Eye Candy addict), decides to reprimand him. With a tactical nuke. Sadly, he misses Commander McNeil by a few minutes.
    • In ancient history, in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, you get nuked by Kane during the final mission.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series:
    • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Stalin launches nukes against capital cities of the Allies to ensure victory. Of course, the good guys disarm them in flight — which they only knew how to do because one of Stalin's top commanders had defected out of ethical concerns over the nuclear weapons programme and how it was going to be used (in addition to Stalin's intent to nuke Allied cities, he was also planning to use Soviet armies as sacrificial bait to put Allied armies in a position to be nuked)^note in that timeline, the Soviets were the first to develop nukes.
    • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, Chicago is destroyed by a nuclear bomb after the player destroys the psychic amplifier and the USSR has no further use for the city. A technical Fission Mailed, too.
    • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, the mission Power Play basically revolves around you trying to stop Yuri from nuking the city every ten minutes. It doesn't help that Yuri tends to use his first nuke to destroy your War Factory and you don't have a Construction Yard in this mission.
    • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Soviet General Krukov and Premier Cherdenko go back in time and kill Einstein to prevent him from granting the Allies technological superiority. On their return, they find that Japan has become the Empire of the Rising Sun and is invading Leningrad. Krukov orders the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal to be used in defense of Leningrad. Nuclear what now? Oops.
  • In Command & Conquer: Generals, the Chinese have nukes, and you can build as many silos as you want. Each with a separate nuclear missile. You don't need line of sight to fire them, either. Death from Above indeed. General Tsing Shi Tao is noted to be obsessed with nuclear weapons, and is eager to use them in every combat situation without regard to the safety of his own men.
• Crysis:
  • In the first game, after pulling off the island, the Navy decides to nuke the aliens, deflecting Dr. Rosenthal warnings that they absorb energy with comments along the lines of "There's no time to study them." To nobody's surprise, the aliens absorb the blast and get stronger. Just as predictably, it's all your problem from there. Then played straight by having the player use a nuclear grenade launcher on the alien spaceship.
  • In the sequel, the military decides to do this to the Ceph Lithoship floating above Central Park. Even though it didn't work last time, to the same aliens that are attacking this time. And even though the blast would destroy much of the New York City area, rendering it uninhabitable for years even if it did work. Fortunately, Col. Barclay stalls them long enough for you to shut the ship down yourself.
• In DEFCON, your job is to pretty much nuke the entire world (with the exception of your own continent). While several other weapons beside nukes exist, they are mostly used to shoot down nuclear missiles. Or shoot down airplanes carrying nuclear missiles. Or sink submarines that can sneak up on you and fire nuclear missiles. All is shown in the style of the final scene from WarGames.
• In Duke Nukem Forever, Duke Nukem himself was once nuked by the U.S. government along with the Cycloid Emperor. Of course, being the Duke, he survived, as revealed in the DLC chapter "The Doctor Who Cloned Me".
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3:
    • One of the first sidequests has the option to detonate the nuke in the center of Megaton, which can be done as soon as you leave the Vault. This is one of two acts in the main game that automatically drop your Karma Meter all the way down to Very Evil (the other is infecting Project Purity with the modified FEV in the end quest).
    • The game also provides miniature nukes for the player to use in very, very small supply, launched by either the Fat Man or the ridiculously overpowered nuclear shotgun that is the Experimental MIRV.
    • Since the game is set in and around Washington, D.C., a player may wonder what happened to the White House. If you go to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you find... a massive, hideously-irradiated crater. Three guesses what happened there.
  • Fallout: New Vegas: Lonesome Road: Ulysses plans to use the remaining nukes in the Divide to wipe out both the NCR and the Legion, in revenge for the Courier inadvertently turning the Divide into a Death City.
  • Fallout 4:
    • In the Far Harbor DLC, one of the ways you can deal with the radiation-worshipping Children of Atom is to convince their leader to initiate "Division", a.k.a. mass ritual suicide via a nuke in their base.
    • In the base game, you have to destroy the Institute if you didn't side with them. This barring the fact that the Brotherhood of Steel confiscates and studies technology, and the Railroad and Minutemen will gain everything from utilizing the advanced technologies for rescuing synths (in the case of the Railroad) and making Commonwealth life better in general (for both factions).
  • Fallout 76 has a handful of nuclear launch sites scattered around the Appalachian region. Resourceful and determined players can seek them out, along with the launch codes necessary to use the nukes, to bomb any part of the region into Kingdom Come.
• Far Cry 5 canonically ends with Hope County being nuked. It is later revealed in Far Cry 6 and its Far Cry 4 DLC pack that these nukes had been purchased by Pagan Min and that, as a result, whomever fired them was the person who had gained control of Kyrat.
• The early 1990s PC game Global Effect lets you nuke enemy cities at will, which makes the whole screen fade into white for a few moments. It's a guaranteed way to punch an ozone hole in the sky.
• The Black Mesa Research Facility is destroyed by a nuclear warhead in Half-Life: Opposing Force. Shephard discovers and disarms the warhead during the chapter "The Package", only for the G-Man to rearm it a few minutes later. It detonates while he addresses Shephard on board an outbound helicopter at the game's conclusion, and at this he considers the Black Mesa incident finally taken care of.
• Halo: Nukes are one of the most potent weapons humanity has against the far more advanced Covenant Empire, functioning as a Boring, but Practical alternative to the Covenant's more exotic plasma-based plasma torpedoes and plasma bombs. Most UNSC warships carry a few of them, and they're used both for killing Covenant warships with proximity detonations and taking out bases, space stations, or armies via insertion by aircraft or Spartans.
  • While effective, nukes have a few big drawbacks. One, they're not cheap; Halo: Ghosts of Onyx specifies that they're a rare and precious resource, and it's a major plot point in Halo: Reach that the titular planet (humanity's military capital) just flat-out ran out of nukes a few days into the Covenant attack. Two, due to the inverse square law they tend to really suffer against hardened targets at a range, which is a big factor in space combat scenarios.^note For context, a 30 megaton nuke detonated at 100 meters would be the equivalent of a 3 kiloton nuke detonated at 1 meter. Three, tying into the latter, the need for a missile bearing a nuke to get really close to effectively hurt a Covenant ship gives said ship plenty of chances to either get out of the way or shoot the missile down with its point-defense lasers. Four, the battles of the Human-Covenant War are more often than not being fought on human worlds, and the UNSC would very much prefer not to nuke their own economic base if they can help it (they often can't, though).
  • Of note is the UNSC's use of "vacuum-enhanced" loads which, via unknown means, somehow give their space nukes the ability to detonate with nearly the same effectiveness as they would in the atmosphere (see here for why that's notable). The drawback seems to be that the filler necessary to make a nuke like this takes up an absurd amount of mass and thus detracts from the volume that could have been used for fissile material — the Hornet mines for example are easily bigger◊ than the Tsar Bomba despite having about half the given yield. The Hyperion's warhead is nearing B41 size yet, going by the fact that Master Chief wasn't vaporized through the window after being within a few hundred meters of one's detonation at the beginning of Halo 4, its yield is far lower.
• Heavy Weapon:
  • Your tank's Smart Bombs, which are easy to obtain, destroy all regular enemies on the screen, and hurt bosses for a lot of damage (without destroying most of the landscape) when used. These can be used in dire situations and against particularly tough bosses to soften them up.
  • The enemy Red Star forces have the Havanski Atomic Bomber presumably sent after you once they find out that you're a credible threat. These guys drop A-bombs which instantly destroy you (and your party in Survival mode) regardless of shielding if one of them even touches anywhere on the ground!
• In Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, this happens to San Francisco in 1987. There's also a full-scale nuclear war annihilating at least Miami and Hawaii in the ending.
• Jak 3, the final weapon upgrade Jak gets is the Supernova, a total Smart Bomb that kills every enemy and vehicle around Jak and Daxter's immediate vicinity in a glorious mushroom cloud. However, it can only be fired a maximum of twice with all ammo extensions, and it has a bad habit of also nuking friendly vehicles and allies.
• Mass Effect: Nukes have generally fallen out of favor, due to the same issues that render them somewhat impractical in Halo (inverse square law, vacuum blast effects, enemy point-defense) being both present and magnified by the fact that every warship is both super maneuverable and equipped with GARDIAN laser systems that can shoot down hundreds of missiles before failing. The fact that they have far superior antimatter warheads, which are so common that even small private corporations can deploy them in backwaters like Noveria, adds to the general uselessness of nukes. Despite that, nukes being cheap in a universe where deuterium — helium-3 fusion is considered quaint civilian-grade tech does give them some niche uses:
  • The Systems Alliance attaches small nuclear bombs ("small" in this context being two Hiroshimas) to their recon probes in case they end up captured by the enemy. A pirate in the first game captures one and tries to use it to assassinate Shepard, though he conveniently gives you enough time to disarm it.
  • Captain Kirrahe improvises a nuclear bomb from his small ship's fusion reactor to take out Saren's base. He gives the probable yield as 25 kilotons, but the resulting fireball is more like 25 gigatons.
  • Jack's loyalty mission has you placing a bomb in an abandoned Cerberus base to metaphorically purge her Dark and Troubled Past. When the apparently man-portable bomb is set off, it turns out to be a multi-megaton detonation that causes a fireball that takes eight seconds to dissipate, as well as a shockwave powerful enough to rock large aircraft tens of kilometers distant (the shuttle had been accelerating away for well over twenty seconds by the time the bomb went off). Apparently, a single cell of a single fringe terrorist group thinks nothing of disposing of such a weapon just to make one of their mercenaries feel better, suggesting that they're dime a dozen in the setting.
  • In Mass Effect 3, the minor Terminus planet of Illium is stated to have stockpiled a huge number of nukes in preparation for the Reaper invasion. While said nukes are explicitly stated to be useless against Reaper warships,^note Likely because of a combination of their point-defense and the inverse square law rendering nukes ineffective past at most a few kilometers against such hardened targets — Reaper ships are routinely seen pulling dozens of gees within Earth-like atmospheres since the first game, so they'd need less than a minute of warning to get completely clear of the danger zone of even large nukes. their husks, transports, and bases are a different story.
  • Also in ME3, the turians end up mass distributing man-portable nukes to suicide bombers and deploying them in an attempt to slow the advance of Reaper ground forces. One particularly successful operation happens when said suicide bombers manage to get inside Reaper capital ships for processing, and then set off their payloads.
  • The turians seem to use larger nukes in ground warfare as well — you can witness several fireballs suddenly forming on the fortress moon of Palaven which are easily visible from space and seemingly dozens of kilometers in diameter, meaning they're either big nukes or antimatter bombs.^note For context, a ~24 kilometer diameter fireball comes out to about 2.5 gigatons.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: The Leviathan Seed on Skytown is protected by an energy shield, and unlike the last level the generators are out of reach. So what solution does the local supercomputer come up with? Assemble some parts they happen to have lying around the place, and drop a nuke on it. It's called a 'Theronian Bomb', but is also referred to as a nuclear weapon, so presumably it's pretty much the same thing with slightly different ingredients.
  • The Omega Cannon in Metroid Prime: Hunters is practically a portable nuclear bomb. It's the only weapon that can kill the final boss and in multiplayer, it kills anyone, including the shooter, instantly if they are caught in the blast.
• In M.U.G.E.N, the A-Bomb nukes your characters and completely vaporizes anything that isn't as overpowered.
• In Octogeddon, the defensive parties against Octogeddon are rather trigger-happy with their nuclear weapons, several sending a dozen of them at once in the so-called "Nuclear Waves". However, they do not do any more damage to Octogeddon than any other thing in the game, and even when exploding in cities they do not cause much destruction.
• Operation Flashpoint and its successors ARMA and ARMA 2 all feature nukes to some extent — though in keeping with the ultra-realistic tone of the games, they are only used as a last resort by madmen. And their detonation, should you fail to stop them, is shown to kick off global thermonuclear armageddon. Particularly true in the ARMA 2 bonus mission 'Eagle Wing', which starts off with your AH-64D moving ahead of a naval taskforce to engage Russian forces, but goes all to hell... A panicked "Pull back!" message from command is cut short by a nuclear detonation, and your helicopter is smashed out of the air. You then have to escape and evade in a silent, devastated world (and this is well outside the blast radius, which covers most of the 100km^2 map!) with your character clearly panicking as an enormous mushroom cloud towers over the horizon and black ash falls from the sky. Incredibly well done.
• In People Playground, one of the bombs that you can use is the Atom Bomb. It generates a huge fiery explosion with a mushroom cloud, and the explosion will kill everything and turn them into charred skeletons. A later update added the Fusion Bomb, which is even stronger than the atom bomb, with its explosion radius usually reaching across the entire map.
• In Postal 2, the Postal Dude Uses a nuclear warhead as a means to quote "Help with marketing." He uses it to also destroy RWS's ex-publishers, Bullfish interactive.
• In [PROTOTYPE], Operation: Firebreak, which is nuking the area, is the Final Solution to deal with a virus infecting a city.
• Resident Evil:
  • Near the end of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, the United States government concludes that Raccoon City cannot be saved. In order to avert wide-scale pandemics of the zombie plague, they fire a nuclear missile. As the news report at the end puts it, "Raccoon City has been literally wiped off the map."
  • Resident Evil 6 has Tall Oaks nuked to prevent the spread of the C-Virus, though the protagonists note that Derek Simmons is more interested in destroying the evidence than preventing the spread.
• Road of the Dead: Evans City was nuked in a desperate bid to stop the outbreak from spreading beyond the city. Not only did the dead survive a nuclear bomb, but all the personnel and civilians that were still trapped in the city were sacrificed for nothing.
  • In Lab of the Dead, Allen notes that the day after Evans City was nuked, more nukes were detonated despite the fact Evans City's nuking was a total failure. This is in part due to the Military Headquarters being overrun by the end of Road of the Dead 2. When Allen snapped and injected poison into the soldiers while they're sleeping, one of them is asleep in front of a map showing where the nukes were dropped and where the zombies were overrunning the cities in the United States alone.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • The first major arc of Shin Megami Tensei I ends with the Americans dropping nuclear missiles on Tokyo. You later Time Skip 30 years into the future, and not surprisingly, the rest of the world has been reduced to nuclear ruin.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, the Schwarzwelt Joint Project's method of erasing that world is through a shower of nukes. As evidenced by a vision that happens in the midpoint of the game, it doesn't work. It takes the Cosmic Eggs to amass the firepower to destroy the Schwarzwelt.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, the Four Archangels continued with the example set in I. Any world they visit and judge unclean, they arrange a nuclear war in and open a gate to the Expanse so the resident demons finish off the remains of Humanity.
• The TEC in Sins of a Solar Empire never leave home without a truckload of nukes for siege purposes. The Marza dreadnought can also be upgraded to re-purpose one for ship-to-ship warfare. Their superweapon, the Novalith Cannon, fires a massive, high-yield nuclear bomb at their hapless enemies' planets. One shot reduces the planets' population by 90%, and makes the rest die of radiation poisoning, two completely sterilizes the planet and makes it unusable for 5 minutes in real-time, which works out to several weeks game-time.
• In the backstory of Star Control II, it's mentioned that, after a nuclear exchange between Middle East countries that took place during 2015 that claimed several million lives, all nuclear weapons were stored in the so-called "Peace Vaults" so they'd never been used again... until the Chenjesu came asking mankind to join the war and they were re-opened, much to their delight.
• This is one of the most powerful weapons for the Terran race StarCraft, dealing damage in a wide area which can wipe-out an entire army and heavily damage any base, destroying lesser buildings in one blast. The slightly psychologically unstable special ops Ghost units, aside from being the only units who can call in nuke drops, also seem to enjoy doing so a great deal... like, a really great deal. Way too much, in fact... If it wasn't for their Restraining Bolt, it might've actually been the source of quite a few big problems.
  Ghost: Whenever I see a world untouched by war, a world of innocence, a world of lush forests and clear rivers... I really just wanna nuke the crap out of it!
• Touhou Project gives us Utsuho Reiuji (aka Okuu), who gained the power of manipulating nuclear fusion after eating a sun god (although her attacks don't use the traditional mushroom cloud, since she tosses miniature stars at people). She uses this power to ensure the fires of Hell keep burning. She's not very bright in canon, which fans like to interpret as her cheerfully throwing out vast spheres of starstuff at the slightest provocation.
• The Hierarchy in Universe at War love radiological weapons. This may be because radiation heals purebred hierarchs, and they get to use the dead and dying indigenous population as zombies.
• In World in Conflict, this happens twice in the campaign. First a tactical nuke is called in to take out an overwhelming Soviet force headed for a "hold at all costs" level objective. Then, at the end of the campaign, you are racing against time to push the Russians out of Seattle before their Chinese reinforcements arrive and the president is forced to obliterate the city. And you can call in as many as you want in multiplayer.
• In the X series, Hammerhead Missiles are nuclear-tipped Terran missiles. A single Hammerhead is more than capable of wiping out an entire fighter wing or destroying a corvette with one shot. Pirates love to fire these things off in mass. In X3: Reunion, the missiles are simply labeled as "Unknown Object" until the Terrans show up.
• How the Zeboim civilization ends in Xenogears. Miang Hawwa is displeased with how the humans she wants to play a role in her greater scheme are developing, and successfully agitates for a planet-wide nuclear war for the purposes of eugenics.

Webcomics

• Standard Operating Procedure for Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater.
• In Among the Chosen, nukes are listed as conventional weapons by a space-faring MegaCorp, which use them almost offhand like any other ordinance. Psychic Powers, on the other hand...
• The default strategy of Bio Apocalypse is to saturate the monster with nukes. When it only hurts the monster but fails to stop it, they launch even more. When that doesn't work they unleash a device that fires 50 nukes per second! And while it royally fucks up the monster, even THAT doesn't work. Beyond just using nukes as a go-to weapon of choice, Nuke Em seems to be the default strategy for everything, but considering the setting of the story, it makes sense in context.
• Parodied in the Sluggy Freelance arc "That Which Redeems", in which the nuke dropped on the demon army turns out to be an acronym for "'Notification of Unified Kindness' Envelopes". Instead of vaporizing everything for miles around, the "nuke" blankets the area with thousands of polite yet stern letters asking the demons to please stop their invasion. This is still considered an abominable act by most Dimension of Lame residents due to the collateral damange:
  Alt-Gwynn: Terrible thunder. Paper cuts impending. Litter unimaginable.

Web Originals

• The German technocracy nukes Verona (core Italy) and about a dozen Russian cities in the World War II of the Chaos Timeline.
• At the end of Dream's "3 Hunters Grand Finale" video, the hunters set up a trap near the End spawn point that they plan to use to kill Dream with the instant he enters the End. Knowing he stands no chance of surviving it normally, Dream opts for the perfectly predictable route of just dropping a quarter-stack of TNT through the stronghold portal. What results is basically an interdimensional bomb, leading to the trap's destruction and all three hunters dying.
• On the Dream SMP, TNT is used very copiously to cause huge amounts of damage. Most notably, L'Manburg gets subjected to this three times:
  • In the War for Indepedence, Dream demands unconditional surrender from L'Manburg or else he'll detonate a block of TNT within L'Manburg's walls. Wilbur, unfazed by merely one block of TNT, declares that he'd rather die defending L'Manburg's right to independence. Unfortunately for Wilbur and L'Manburg, however, doesn't just have that one block within the walls — he also has an entire nuke's worth of TNT hidden right under L'Manburg itself, and detonating the one block above ground causes nearly every block underground to detonate as well, destroying a majority of L'Manburg from the inside out and dealing its defenders a blow they never recover from.
  • Wilbur decided to do this during the Manburg Festival due to his mental spiral, wanting to destroy Manburg because he believed the beliefs that his country stood for no longer existed, and also so that Schlatt would lose power. He eventually does carry out this plan during the Manburg-Pogtopia War, detonating 11 and a half stacks of TNT with his Big Red Button, and leaving a massive crater where his country once stood. Technoblade quickly helps "clean up" the mess Wilbur left behind... by spawning two withers during the battle, generating even more rampant destruction for Tubbo's administration to deal with.
  • The Doomsday War. While L'Manburg is fighting Technoblade, Philza takes them by surprise by launching fifteen withers into the air, completely decimating most of the nation. And just as they are starting to overcome the withers, it turns out that it was just meant to buy time for the real attack — Dream's obsidian TNT launchers, which rain enough Death from Above to turn what was once a nation into a gaping hole to bedrock.
• For All Time has nuke gets getting tossed around by snowballs. They're first used to destroy three cities in Germany and three in Japan to end World War II, then to quell communist uprisings in the Philippines. After the Soviets drop a hydrogen bomb on Zagreb, it just goes downhill from there. Hands down the most impressive developmental example goes to Korea's Great People's Revolutionary Hammer, a 250,000 Megaton Doomsday Device — which ends up bringing an end to Korea after it's bombed to hell by a coalition of world powers. However, the achievement for most destruction goes to the Soviet Union under Andrei Chikatilo. They wipe out China in a nuclear exchange in 1973, unleash an unprovoked attack on the Middle East in 1975, and finally turns its arsenal on itself in a nuclear civil war in the 1980s.
• In Gaming All-Stars, the Guardian Units of Nations resorts to this after the flood of villains in S3 E7 becomes too out of control for them to shoot down normally, forcing them to drop a hydrogen bomb on the city the monsters were invading. Tragically, it not only obliterates the whole city's infrastructure, but it results in all of the heroes at the scene being mass-trophified, only being revived when Marcus Fenix arrives shortly after the events of the nuking.
• A Giant Sucking Sound: The Aum Shinrikyo apocalypse cult, best known for its sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway OTL, obtains a nuclear bomb and nukes Nagoya, killing 2 million people.
• In The Innocent, the children use nuclear bombs against Australia andIndonesia. It is never truly shown or implied that these countries never surrendered before the nukes fell.
• Part of the dystopian nature of No W is that nukes are used with reckless abandon by both nations and terrorist groups alike. As of this writing, the list of cities nuked includes Colombo, Moscow, Tbilisi, Cairo, and most of Pakistan and northern India.
• In A Rake by Starlight, Baron Minerva Tyrelos' enemies aren't above using nukes in their assassinations.
• Rejection and Revenge: The premise is Osama Bin Laden getting his hands on nuclear materials during the breakup of the Soviet Union. New York, Century City, Las Vegas, and Riyadh are hit on February 11, 1993. Tel Aviv was also a target, but a terrorist was apprehended by Israeli before anything could happen. Iran, due to the terrorist fingering Hezbollah is blamed. Bill Clinton decides to drops nukes on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
• Rock, Paper, Anything has nukes of various kinds used every now and then.
• In The Salvation War noted several times where Nukes might have been useful, and Word of God said that if the legions of Hell were NOT in a place where quick military action was able to take place they would have Nuked them. It wasn't needed in the first book just because of the effectiveness of modern military hardware. The second book however has three Nukes, and one of them plays this trope straight in a sideways way. One was launched by a Nuclear sub being controlled by an angel, and another was used to wipe out an angel army. The third almost killed Michel, who sensed the cart he was puling was a bit too heavy, and kicked it back through a portal.
• The SCP Foundation has several references to "onsite nukes" being ready on certain sites in case of any notable containment breach, and some stories feature them actually being detonated (such as in the alternate universe featured in SCP-2935, O, Death).
• SMPEarth: Philza has used nuclear weapons for unjustified reasons in multiple instances, including nuking the Villager Adoption Agency over a faction invite, and Business Bay over losing a single diamond to their casino.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In the episode "The Check", Gumball's fantasy sequence of what he'd do with $5,000 depicts him running for president of the world and providing citizens with soda, pizza, and robot servants. When the robots rebel against their masters, Gumball announces that he's skipping to the end and presses a button to nuke the country.
• The Intruder II sees this combined with Hoist by His Own Petard as The Intruder is killed by TOM using the very ship he used to lure the Absolution there, overloaded the engines and destroying the Absolution and the Intruder with it.
• In the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Doomsday Sanction", General Wade Eiling's first thought after he is told to fix the Doomsday situation is to drop a nuclear warhead (with a little kryptonite mixed in) on Doomsday and, by extension, Superman and San Baquero. Since Eiling planned to get to Superman eventually and had long wanted to stop drug smuggling from San Baquero, he considered it killing three birds with one stone. Even Amanda Waller is disgusted by this attitude.
• Megas XLR is apparently armed with nuclear weapons. In the "Viva Las Megas" episode, Coop proposes using them to blast out of an underground bunker, but is waved off by Jamie and Kiva. He laments "What's the point of havin' nukes if I can't use em?"
• Coiffio orders Model Robot in Perfect Hair Forever to "Twansfohm into an A-bomb and bwoh yohself up" for no real reason than he hates Model Robot. Model Robot complies, instantly (as opposed to the excessively long transformation sequence he displayed earlier in the show) and takes Coiffio's entire ship with him when he explodes (though Coiffio himself miraculously survives).
• In ReBoot, standard Guardian protocol for dealing with a Class 5 web-creature in a system like Mainframe is to destroy the entire system. A Class 5 creature is capable of opening a portal to the Web, and through Mainframe's connections that can lead to an invasion of the entire Net. The Guardians themselves dislike this policy, but the Web and the creatures within it are seen as so great a threat that even the loss of an entire system is preferable to a war. They do at least send operatives to the systems in question to positively confirm that there is such a web-creature present, even they would not blow up a city on an unconfirmed rumor, but once the rumor is confirmed they push the button without a second thought.
• In South Park, when Finland decides to confess to the space police that they are harboring stolen space money, all other countries in the world agree to get rid of Finland. Immediately, nuclear missiles wipe Finland off the planet in a matter of seconds.
• In The Simpsons, Nelson has a poster in his room which says "Nuke the Whales".
  Lisa: You don't really believe that, do you?
  Nelson: [shrugs] Gotta nuke something.

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