Nuclear war calendar: Real-time and month-date calendar, animated explosion in the sky. Nuclear , or atomic warfare, is a battle in which nuclear weapons are used. The cumulative effect of a wide-scale nuclear war could have such devastating and destructive force that it is often seen as a scenario for potential extermination of all life on Earth. Some Cold War strategists argued that a limited nuclear war could be possible between two heavily armed superpowers (such as the United States and the Soviet Union) and if so several predicted that a limited war could "escalate" into an all-out war..