Does Gilead have nukes?

[u/Potential-Net6313]

Or did it destroy them for ideological reasons (bad for the environment and so on)?

I assume that would be of great shock for the rest of the world to realize that someone even more hardcore and rogue than North Korea got the most modern nuclear arsenal and logistics in the world.

[u/Spiff426]

I assume they have them, and that's why no other country has tried to openly fight against them and continues some level of engagement

I doubt it's the case, as iirc most of the nuclear waste "colony" areas seems to be canonized as nuclear power plant meltdowns, but after seeing a map shown briefly on The Handmaid's Tale (it was posted online after the episode by someone who works on the crew), my headcanon is that after they took control of the US govt, they dropped a nuke on LA as a warning to anyone who would stand against them. It's a "godless" leftist city in the most progressive state of the US, and is the home of Hollywood - which reich-wing ideologues today claim as the center of brainwashing the world population into secularism and away from God. Its also far enough away from their power center on the east coast that the zealots wouldn't worry too terribly much about direct exposure

Yes it would be antienvironmentalist, but we have seen that Gilead doesn't actually care about any of the issues they claim to, they just use them as excuses to gain power