Modern Marvels: Deadliest Weapons

A look at the origins of five of the world's most lethal weapons.
Here are the stories behind the creation--and use--of these extraordinary devices.
Meet the engineers and experts charged with containing these awesome forces.
In this fiery hour, MODERN MARVELS® profiles five of the world's deadliest weapons, focusing on the inventors, battles, and dark technology behind their lethality.
Beginning with the deadliest bomb ever created, the Tsar Bomba--a 50-megaton nuclear bomb--the program moves on to the deadliest weapons ever used on people, the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. During WWI, the machine gun led to the deaths of over 8 million, and in WWII, incendiary bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people. Another deadly invention of WWII was the proximity fuse that allowed artillery to detonate within a predetermined range of an enemy target. Finally, we examine VX nerve gas--a deadly chemical agent used twice by Saddam Hussein with devastating results--and visit Edgewood Chemical BioCenter, where suspicious items in the current war in Iraq are examined for traces of VX.