The Warzone 2 nuke is real: someone just detonated it live on stream

The biggest rumour about Call of Duty: Warzone 2 since its launch this week is that, somewhere on the Al Mazrah map, there's a nuke hidden away: a weapon that, when used, will instantly end the match for all players and declare one squad the victor. The lack of any hard information about this, and the odd bit of developer teasing, has led to players tearing apart Al Mazrah to try and find the weapon.

Take a bow Wagnificent, and not just for the excellent handle. The streamer is the first Warzone 2 player to set off a nuke, and he did it live. In fact, he's is still live on the same stream at the time of writing, but here's the video proof that, yes, Warzone 2 has a nuke.

Wagnificent and his squad are currently trying to replicate the feat but it wasn't completely obvious first time around what triggered the opportunity for the nuke. Here's what we know so far:

On the stream it looks like the squad picked up a specific quest or contract that appeared on their map as soon as the match started. The conditions for getting the quest aren't clear, but Wagnificent thinks he might know how his squad got it.

After accepting the "Champion's Contract", the pair began flying to marked locations to collect pieces of the nuke. We know there are at least three pieces: Tritium, Beryllium, and Plutonium. The pieces themselves are orb-shaped nuclear cores in a special container. The squad holding the cores seems to be marked for every other squad on the map with a very prominent golden crown.

We think a squad needs all three cores to set off the nuke and, yes, other players can steal the cores from one another. Once all the cores are collected, the nuke can be triggered from a marked bomb site.

When it explodes, the nuclear blast takes over Wagnificent's screen and ends the match, putting his squad in first place with a bespoke, mushroom-cloud-filled ending cutscene. Nukes have been in Call of Duty since the original Modern Warfare 2 (how old that makes me feel), where in that case players could have a Tactical Nuke as a killstreak reward for 25 kills.

Wagnificent's squad  for this feat included EthanStellar and opmarked.

Doubtless the nukes will be flying soon, even if this time unlocking them isn't as straightforward as shooting lots of other players. Warzone 2 has had something of a buggy launch though, as our review-in-progress notes, even the glitches can't detract from how fantastic the new map is—while the new Warzone 2 DMZ mode almost feels like Call of Duty's future.