Tactical Nuke

"End the game with a bang..."

- In-game description

The Tactical Nuke is an unlockable killstreak reward in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which takes 25 (24 with Hardline) kills in a row to obtain.

Overview
Requiring 25 consecutive kills (or 24 with the Hardline Perk), this killstreak is the hardest to acquire in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It can be unlocked as early as level 10. The best way to get a nuke is to need A Harrier Strike, then a Chopper Gunner and then to the nuke.



Once used, a ten second countdown will display on all player's screens as the nuclear warhead, although invisible, falls to the ground, and a siren will sound. Once the countdown expires, the entire battlefield will be engulfed in white light as the nuke explodes. Time will appear to slow, all vehicles and killstreak rewards will explode, and finally, all spawned players including the user, die on the spot. Oddly, chickens on maps such as Rundown and Karachi, do not die. A Tactical Nuke detonation results in an automatic win for the user and their team, no matter what the current score is - however if a nuke is called in a Free-For-All, when an enemy has more kills than the Nuke user, the Nuke will not give the user a win. Once a Tactical Nuke is called in, the current score will freeze. This means that the scores will not increase even if players capture objectives, or kill enemies. For example, if the score in Domination was 199 to 180 and someone called in a nuke, the score will remain the same.

Because of how difficult the nuke is to obtain, many players "boost" in Free For All or even Team Deathmatch in order to attain illegitimate Nukes.



After the Tactical Nuke explodes, it will kill all players who are alive within 5 seconds of its explosion. This can greatly extend the user's killstreak, as long as they are one of the final players killed - and it does add to the user's Leaderboards Killstreak. However, this can be avoided by calling a controllable killstreak with a laptop (Predator Missile, Chopper Gunner, etc.) exactly when the nuke goes off. A player can also survive a Tactical Nuke while in Final Stand or Last Stand.

The Nuke does not kill players in a random order. The bomb is dropped off map. If standing at the edge of the map, looking out, and where the bomb is dropped the player will see an explosion and shock wave almost identical to when the Nuke goes off in the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare campaign mission "Shock and Awe". The players will be killed in order of distance (closest to furthest) of the explosion.

Trivia

 * Upon detonation, all enemy killstreaks will be destroyed, giving the player who called the Nuke the amount of XP they would normally get for destroying a killstreak.
 * If the player activates the Nuke in Demolition while his or her team is losing, the player will not get the "Ultimate Sacrifice" challenge. This also applies in FFA.
 * If one listens carefully when a friendly tactical nuke is called in, of all the announcers, the Spetsnaz announcer remains calm.
 * It is possible to see helicopters going down in the shock wave, even if there are no helicopters on the map.
 * A scrapped game mode was hidden in the code of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 named Global Thermonuclear War. The objective was to capture the nuke, and the first team to obtain 100 points would win, at which point the Tactical Nuke would be automatically activated.
 * The only time being killed by a friendly goes on a player's permanent kill/death ratio is when a friendly nuke goes off.
 * Though the announcer sometimes tells the player to "turn the key" to call in the nuke, the C4 clacker is used to activate it.
 * It is possible to survive a Tactical Nuke by simply going into Last Stand or Final Stand just before the blast or pull out a laptop (i.e. Predator Missile or Chopper Gunner) when the nuke explodes.
 * The Tactical Nuke was originally a potential roll in Care Packages. It was cut for obvious reasons.