After reports of a small earthquake last night (January 5) in North Korea, the country issued a statement saying it has successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, the most powerful type of nuclear weapon.
Experts have yet to verify North Korea's claim of detonating a "miniaturized" version of a thermonuclear bomb, but it's clear the nation set off some kind of nuke underground.
The test — North Korea's fourth — joins an unfortunate legacy that began just more than 70 years ago: when the United States detonated the first nuclear bomb.
That event led to a world-wide nuclear arms race and the eventual explosion of more than 2,150 nukes in test sites around the globe, from 1945 through 2009.
The devastating effects of the tests and danger of nuclear proliferation led to a United Nations treaty designed to ban nuclear testing.
North Korea still hasn't signed and ratified that treaty — but it's not the only country that has failed to do so.
A terrifying legacy
US testing in the early period of nuclear development exposed thousands of people in the islands and atolls of the Pacific Ocean to harmful radiation.
However, a recent YouTube video by Seeker Stories claims that a Soviet-era testing in Semipalatinsk or the "Polygon" — what is now part of northeast Kazakhstan — was the most devastating program of them all.
That New Jersey-sized region saw hundreds of nuclear blasts from 1949 through 1989, exposing more than 1.5 million people and subsequent generations to radioactive fallout.
Such radioactive dust and ash can get into drinking water, mix into soil, contaminate livestock and food, and ultimately end up inside people's bodies, where it can harm them and their future children.
The long-term effects on the inhabitants of Semipalatinsk are shocking, including unusually high rates of "thyroid diseases, cancer, birth defects, deformities, premature aging, and cardiovascular disease," according to a Boston.com profile of some survivors.
Banning nuclear tests
Semipalatinsk and other terrifying legacies of nuclear weapons testing aren't lost upon the Russian Federation or other nations. In 1996, the United Nations worked to adopt the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to completely ban nuclear explosions "by everyone, everywhere: on the Earth's surface, in the atmosphere, underwater and underground."
So far 163 countries have fully agreed to abide the treaty, according to the UN commission in charge of the test ban, including France, the UK, and Russia.
Before the CTBT can be enforced, though, eight countries with nukes still need to sign and ratify the document: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and — yes — the United States.
Before January 5, the last known test by an unsigned nation was also conducted by North Korea, which detonated a nuke underground on February 12, 2013. India and Pakistan detonated bombs in 1998, and the last-known US nuclear tests happened in 1992.
It's unclear whether North Korea's latest test was really successful and if what it detonated was truly a hydrogen bomb.
Yang Uk, a senior research fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum, told The Guardian: "Given the scale it is hard to believe this is a real hydrogen bomb. They could have tested some middle stage kind (of device) between an A-bomb and H-bomb, but unless they come up with any clear evidence, it is difficult to trust their claim."
Regardless, until the treaty is enacted, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their testing seems inevitable. The forms that proliferation take are often confusing, though. For example, the US is spending $1 trillion to modernize and reduce its nuclear arsenal, but it is simultaneously upgrading the capabilities of its aging weaponry, and this could motivate Russia and other nuke-wielding nations to follow suit.
Watch the full video by Seeker Stories below for more on the story of the Polygon and its inhabitants.
