Nuclear weapons are not unique only in terms of blast size.  The radiation they create is a wholly new danger with no historical president.  The creation, handling storage and eventual disposal of nuclear material is also new.<p>The hellburners had, perhaps, a few tons worth of explosive.  And it was blackpowder rather than TNT.  A relatively tiny nuke, such as the AIM-26 air-to-air missile, explodes with the equivalent of 250 metric tonnes of TNT.  The smallest ever nukes are in the 10-50 tonnes range, still well beyond the blackpowder in any hellburner.  The proportion of energy released as radiation and&#x2F;or fallout is generally inversely related to yield (less confinement of the critial mass &gt; less efficient burning).  So Be afraid of tiny nukes.<p>The the future they will likely use antimatter, not as explosive but as a neutron source.  That would allow for much smaller nukes once they figure out how to keep the antimatter suspended within the uranium shell.  Such weapons could burn uranium very efficiently, resulting in much reduced fallout.