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Nuclear weapons derive their destructive power from nuclear fission or fusion reactions where the total mass of the resulting products is slightly less than the initial mass of the reactants. This phenomenon, known as the mass defect, represents the release of nuclear binding energy during the reaction. Albert Einstein's equation, E=mc², describes this mass-energy equivalence and shows that even a tiny amount of mass results in a vast amount of energy because the speed of light squared is an enormous constant. Scientific records from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Scientific and Technical Information confirm that the energy released in a nuclear detonation is directly proportional to this lost mass. While some physicists clarify that mass and energy are different manifestations of the same physical quantity rather than one literally transforming into the other, the functional result in a weapon is the liberation of energy from matter. For example, historical data from the Manhattan Project indicates that the energy released in the Hiroshima detonation was equivalent to the conversion of less than one gram of mass.