The Cold War.....
The Cold War was quite possibly the scariest, most pivotal, most suspenseful, and scarring war in the history of mankind, it was the war where neither side so much as poked the other. The Cold War was a 43 year long period of political and military tension, from 1947-1990. Imagine two guys of absolute equal strength playing arm-wrestle, or two guys playing chess, but stuck at a stalemate, or like in War Games, imagine two guys playing tic-tac-toe...once again stalemate. Now take those thoughts, and apply them to the real-world, with two superpowers, each armed with enough firepower to end the human race, now let's just say these two sides were disagreeing. There you have the basic summary of the Cold War. It was a war that was "cold" because (as I mentioned) except for a number of wars within the war (such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, etc.) there was no actual conflict, between 3 "worlds"; the 1st "world", a.k.a. The Western Bloc which was made up of all nations that practiced capitalism of any sorts (The United States of America (the first nuclear superpower), it's allies such as the U.K., and N.A.T.O.). The 2nd "world", a.k.a. the Eastern Bloc, made up of and nations that practiced socialism (The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the second superpower) and all of its allies in the Warsaw Pact.). Then there was the 3rd "world" which was everyone else. For all extensive purposes though, it was mainly just between World #1 and #2. So there you have it, the basic understanding of the Cold War.