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Most arms races have occurred in the modern era. One of the first arms races occurred in the pre- World War I era from the 1890s to 1914 where the five great powers of Europe ( Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, France, and the United Kingdom) were locked in an all-out military buildup, ranging from land armies, conscription, and artillery to battleships and competition between each country's mobilization speed. France reached a mobilization speed of just 3 days. At one point, it was estimated Germany could become fully war ready in only 2 days.

One significant recent example was the race to develop more and better nuclear weapons during the Cold WarThe Cold War (c. 1945- 1991) was the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between groups of nations practicing different ideologies and political systems. On one side was the Soviet Union and its allies, often referred to as the E. Carl SaganCarl Edward Sagan ( November 9, 1934 December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer and science popularizer. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( SETI). He is world-famous for his popular science books and the once famously described the overkillFor the thrash metal band, see Overkill (band). Overkill is a slang term for the use of excessive force that seems to go farther than just achieving its goal. For example, trying to kill a bee with a gun would be overkill. Overkill is especially used to r in this arms race with the analogy of "two men standing waist deep in gasoline; one with three matches, the other with five."

The term "arms race" is used generically to describe any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors. EvolutionThis article is about biological evolution. For other possible meanings, see Evolution (disambiguation). Evolution generally refers to any process of change over time. However, in the context of the life sciences, evolution is a change in the genetic makeary arms races are common occurrences, e.g. predators evolving more effective means to catch prey while their prey evolves more effective means of evasion. This is sometimes called the Red QueenThe Red Queen or Red Queen's Race is an evolutionary theory explaining the advantage of sex. By making every individual an experiment when mixing mother's and father's genes, sex may allow a species to adapt quickly just to hold onto the ecological niche effect. In addition to predators, parasiteA parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of it. The biological interaction between the host and the parasite is called parasitism. Parasitism is a type of symbiosis, by one definition, although anots can force their hosts into an arms race.

In technology, there are close analogues of the arms races between parasites and hosts, such as the arms race between computer virusIn computer security technology, a virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents (for a complete definition: see below). Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biologic writers and anti-virus software writers.