Cold War

The Cold War is a historical period as defined by the Convention on Human Chronology.

The Cold War was not a war in the traditional sense of the term, but rather a 44-year long period of global political tension on Earth, that started in 1947, after World War II, and is considered to have ended in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, one of the main actors of the Cold War.

This period saw the advent of many technologies now considered commonplace, such as primitive space travel, nuclear missiles, personal computers and satellites. The acceleration of technological progress observed throughout the Cold War can be attributed to the rivalry between the two dominating nation-states on Earth at the time : the United States of America (USA), and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), characterized by the nuclear arms race and the Space Race.

Following a number of proxy wars all over Earth, and many nuclear close calls which threatened the survival of the human species, the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991.