Nuclear Weapons in Popular Culture - in Video Games

In Video Games

• In the games Tropico 3 and Tropico 4 - nuclear testing are available as edict
• In the game Tomb Raider the game's antagonist, Jacqueline Natla, is released from her prison by a nuclear weapons test.
• In the game Mass Effect the player, Commander Shepard, uses a "repurposed" starship drive core to destroy an alien cloning facility, and recovers a human thermonuclear booby trap of a human scout probe.
• In Mass Effect 3 a massive, two-millennia old turian nuclear munition is uncovered by the human-supremacist group Cerberus, who proceed to attempt to detonate it in the densely-populated area in which it had been left behind. The detonation is prevented by a turian detaching the implosion array, which then harmlessly explodes.
• In the game Missile Command the player must defend a city against a never ending series of incoming nuclear missiles.
• Guerre Nucléaire (translates, from French, as Nuclear War) is an interactive fiction game. This text game is a simulation of a war between the USSR and USA.
• The Ace Combat Series featured nuclear strikes. Example: in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, Belka, a fictional antagonist, detonated several nuclear warheads to fend off Allied troops.
• Frontlines: Fuel of War includes the detonations of two tactical nuclear warheads to destroy American tank battalions.
• Several RTS games have the possibility to use nuclear devices as "superweapons"; Command & Conquer series, Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Empire Earth are typical examples.
• The 2006 game DEFCON by UK-based independent developer Introversion Software puts the player in charge of one of six world territories in a situation which inevitably deteriorates to global thermonuclear war. The game uses a graphical and audio style which deliberately evokes images from films such as WarGames, cited by the developers as a major inspiration. With the sense that nuclear war is being commanded by distant generals in deep underground bunkers using abstract images, the game gives an unsettling impression of how popular culture imagined nuclear war would look to the people responsible for starting it. Because "Everybody Dies", DEFCON is extremely difficult to win, as all sides will inevitably suffer nuclear attack. In the game's terminology, the victor is the player who 'loses the least'.
• The Civilization series features nuclear weapons as a possible area of research in their extensive "tech trees." A player must construct their own version of the Manhattan Project to unlock the construction of nuclear weapons; afterward all players with sufficient technology can build nuclear weapons. In all versions of Civilization the use of nuclear weapons destroys all units in the area that was attacked, pollutes the surrounding area, and contributes to global warming. A nuclear attack on or near a city decreases the population of the city rather than annihilating it (Civilization Revolution has a single ICBM which can destroy cities).
• The Fallout series of computer games contains numerous direct and indirect allusions to nuclear wars and potential nuclear holocaust, with a distinct 1950s cold war style. The games themselves are set in a post-nuclear war wasteland where human civilisation has been ended by a nuclear conflict between the USA and China, and the main character of the first game is a 'Vault Dweller', a survivor from a self-contained nuclear shelter. The first two games contain devices resembling the Trinity "Gadget" as central plot elements, and during one of the main quests in Fallout 3, the player must decide whether to detonate or disarm a nuclear bomb resembling the Fat Man in the center of a town called "Megaton."
• The game Balance of Power, written by Chris Crawford and published in 1985 puts the player in the position of the President of the United States or the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, with the goal of increasing "prestige", balanced out by the need to avoid a nuclear war, which ends the game.
• Trinity was a text adventure game that featured a plotline involving time travel to various sites related to nuclear weapons. The title refers to the Trinity test site.
• In the StarCraft series, the Terran can construct laser-guided nuclear missiles for Ghost units to deploy. Several locations in StarCraft's backstory were affected by nuclear attacks prior to the events of the game.
• In Nuclear Strike, the third level begins in Pyongyang, North Korea. It is revealed that a nuclear bomb has been smuggled inside Kim Il-sung's giant statue at Mansudae Hill and the player has to escort as many diplomats out of the city as possible before the bomb detonates.
• In the Microsoft Windows strategy game World in Conflict, the United States uses tactical nuclear weaponry to halt the advance of the Soviet Union in America. The weapons are also available in multiplayer games.
• The Metal Gear Solid Series by Konami, revolves around Metal Gear, a weapon described as a giant solo-operating tank capable of firing nuclear missiles at any target on the planet's surface.
• In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater the primary antagonist, Colonel Volgin, obtains two M-388 Davy Crockett nuclear rifles. He then uses one of them to destroy half of a forest and cover up the theft.
• Several games, including Fallout 3, the Ratchet and Clank series and the Unreal series feature a tactical nuclear missile or grenade launcher that the player can find (or upgrade to) and use. This seems to be a reference to the real-life man-portable Davy Crockett tactical nuclear weapon.
• The Soviets in both Command & Conquer: Red Alert and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, the Brother of Nod in Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and the Chinese in Generals can launch small tactical missiles to destroy key units and buildings, although the destruction is nowhere near its real-life counterpart. However, in Red Alert one mission requires the player prevent a strategic nuclear strike on Paris, and in Red Alert 2, the Soviets successfully destroy Chicago with a large nuclear bomb. In the game's expansion pack, Yuri's Revenge, the main villain nukes Seattle, Washington several times to extort money from a computer corporation. In a mod for C&C Generals Zero Hour, called 2015, Waste Land Conflict, the game features a nuke that is very realistic in damage and creates an EMP wave.
• In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a group of the warlord Al-Asad's forces in a fictional Middle Eastern country under occupation by the USMC detonate a Russian nuclear warhead, annihilating themselves, the capital city and nearly the entire invading US Marine force. Later in the game, the USMC must work together with the SAS to stop two SS-27 Topol M missiles, loaded with MIRVs, sent by the Russian ultranationalist forces, from destroying eight US cities: Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Norfolk, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. - which would kill more than 40 million people.
• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Captain Price launches a nuclear missile out of a nuclear submarine - however, instead of attacking land, he detonates it in the stratosphere, destroying the International Space Station and creating an electro-magnetic pulse throughout the eastern seaboard of the United States in order to disable all invading Russian tech sources and turn the tide of battle in America's favor. Also, in multiplayer gameplay, a person that has received 25 kills (or 24 with the second tier perk upgrade called hardline) without dying can call in a "tactical nuke" to end the game.
• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the game's antagonist, Vladimir Makarov, captures the Russian president in an attempt to extract Russia's nuclear launch codes from him.
• In Tom Clancy's EndWar Saudi Arabia and Iran have destroyed each other with nuclear weapons, setting the basis for the storyline of the game.
• In Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots you can access nuclear missiles once you are at an advanced enough age. Each launched nuke reduces the so-called "Armageddon timer" by 1, and when it reaches zero, the game instantly ends with "Armageddon", causing every player to lose the game. (Simulating the effects of a nuclear winter)
• In the popular Halo franchise of video games and novels, nuclear weapons, from hand-held to planet-devastating, are used in both space and land combat by the United Nations Space Command.
• In Warhammer 40,000, nuclear weapons are used to cause widespread damage to a planet (the methods collectively being called an "Exterminatus", a mass execution of a population through futuristic weapons) and in combat. The nukes must be properly arranged in orbit to create a global firestorm.
• In Mercenaries 2, the main objective of the player is to obtain a Nuclear bunker buster to penetrate the main enemy's hardened bunker (after which the bomb can be purchased and used according to the player's wishes).
• In Spore's Civilization stage, militaristic nations may use two types of nuclear weapon once certain prerequisites have been fulfilled - the Gadget Bomb, which can wipe out all structures of a city and capture it instantly, and the ICBM, which can be used to wipe out every nation on the planet simultaneously, winning the stage. The Gadget Bomb severely impacts international relations, and both weapons produce indestructible radioactive rubble.
• The RTS game Warzone 2100 is set after a nuclear holocaust initiated by an intelligent computer virus known as Nexus.
• In the RTS Supreme Commander and its expansion pack Forged Alliance, all of the factions have strategic nuclear missiles. In addition, many nuclear powered units explode with the blast of one.
• In the RTS War Front: Turning Point, the Allied faction's super weapon is a small nuclear bomb dropped from a Northrop YB-35, that unleashes a small sized yet long lasting damaging blast.
• In the ThirdWire series of combat flight simulators (Strike Fighters: Project 1, and the games descended from it) there are several downloadable modification which allow the player to use nuclear weapons. Free falling bombs, air to surface missiles, air to air missiles, and air to air rockets are covered in these modifications. American, British, Russian and French weapons are provided (with the range of American weapons being the most comprehensive). A variety of effects packages are available to provide the appropriate visual representation of the nuclear explosion. Several of aircraft in the ThirdWire series were either designed as, or came to be used as nuclear weapons carrying aircraft including the F-101 Voodoo, F-89 Scorpion, and B-29 Superfortress.
• In the games Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain and the original Syphon Filter both end with either the player or Gabe Logan having to disarm a nuclear missile.
• In the game Nuclear War, a turn-based strategy game, the player takes part of a satirical and cartoonish nuclear battle between five world powers.
• In the game Splinter Cell: Double Agent the is a possible ending with two events where the player must disarm a nuclear bomb, one in the JBA headquarters, another on a boat. One of the mission failure scenes shows New York City being destroyed in an explosion.
• In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, a mission requires Samus Aran, the game's main protagonist, to use her ship to collect 3 pieces of a thermonuclear bomb needed to break a force field blocking her way to a boss fight.
• In Twisted Metal 4, the playable character Calypso drives a truck where its special attack is to launch the nuclear missile it carries.
• In a few Shin Megami Tensei titles, nuclear weapons have destroyed the world and became responsible for creating a dimensional rift that allowed demons to cross over.
• The flight simulator F/A 18 Korea Gold includes nuclear strike missions using the B61 tactical thermonuclear weapon.
• In the 2007 4X-RTS Sins of a Solar Empire the Trader Emergency Coalition (the game's "baseline human" faction, as opposed to psychic transhumans or aliens) uses nuclear weapons fairly liberally, for space-to-space combat, including nuclear torpedoes for anti-structure attacks, and for planetary bombardment, including salted bombs.
• In Battlefield 3, the main antagonist, Solomon, buys three portable nuclear devices from Amir Kaffarov, a Russian arms dealer, and detonates one in Paris in the mission "Comrades". The player finds one of them in mission "Operation Guillotine", and the last one in the mission "The Great Destroyer". The player also sees the nuke detonating in Paris and a picture of its mushroom cloud in the starting cutscene of "Thunder Run".
• The game Metro 2033, a first-person shooter based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel of the same title, takes place in a nuclear war ravaged Moscow and its metro tunnels. Radiation has made the upper world toxic and has mutated the wildlife. The player, Artyom, can choose to spare the mutants or destroy them with nuclear missiles.