(politics, public policy, military) The threat of massive retaliation using nuclear weapons should a potential enemy use them first, both sides being annihilated in the event of war.

Any human-made weapon causing indiscriminate large-scale death or destruction, especially a biological weapon, chemical weapon, nuclear weapon or radiological weapon.

plural of non-destructive read

(computing, often attributive) A read operation that does not erase the data being read in the process of reading it.