nuclear-news

Why we should worry about nuclear weapons again

Washington Post , by Jon B. Wolfsthal, Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda,3 June 25

The Cold War prospect of global annihilation has faded from consciousness, but the warheads remain.

ver the past 30 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the prospect of nuclear war has faded from the American consciousness. With the end of the Cold War, films depicting the last days of humanity, such as 1959’s “On the Beach,” or the 1983 TV drama “The Day After,” largely disappeared from the Hollywood playbook. Schoolchildren no longer hid under their desks during practice drills to survive nuclear war.

But the weapons never went away. While thousands were scrapped and nuclear inventories were significantly reduced, many other weapons were put into storage and still thousands more remain deployed, ready for use.

Now, they and the dangers they pose are making a comeback.

The last nuclear age was defined by two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — poised to destroy one another in less than an hour. They both kept nuclear weapons locked and loaded to deter the other by threatening retaliation and certain destruction.

Today’s global nuclear landscape is far more complicated and, in many ways, more precarious. More countries and more advanced technologies are involved. Weapons can fly farther, faster, from more places. Information, accurate or false, can move even more quickly. Autocrats and extremists hold positions of power in nuclear-armed countries. Nuclear threats, once taboo, are now increasingly common. And the last nuclear arms control treaty still in force between Russia and the United States expires in February.

Many of the most dangerous ideas from the Cold War are being resurrected: lower-yield weapons to fight “limited” nuclear wars; blockbuster missiles that could destroy multiple targets at once; the redeploying of a whole class of missiles once banned and destroyed by treaty. On top of this, countries are testing new ways to deliver these weapons, including nuclear-powered cruise missiles that can fly for days before hitting their targets; underwater unmanned nuclear torpedoes; fast-flying, maneuverable glide vehicles that can evade defenses; and nuclear weapons in space that can attack satellites or targets on Earth without warning.

Our organization, the Federation of American Scientists, was created by the same people who invented the atomic bomb at Los Alamos to ensure that when policy was made, it was informed by science and technical facts. For 80 years, we have sought to promote public accountability and transparency about nuclear arsenals. Relying only on unclassified information, including satellite imagery and government data, we maintain the world’s most accurate publicly available estimates of the world’s nuclear arsenals.  Now that the nuclear threat has roared back to life, we believe it is our responsibility to provide accurate, nonpartisan information to help reduce the risk of nuclear disaster. We underestimate that risk at our collective peril.

“At this moment in human history,” the Nobel Committee said in announcing last year’s Peace Prize, “it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.” The prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, an association of survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 — the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in wartime.

The numbers

Nine nations now have nuclear weapons: Russia, the United States, Britain, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Together, they possess more than 12,200 nuclear warheads, located at approximately 120 sites in 14 countries. More than 9,500 are militarily active or deployed, ready for use. Roughly 2,100 of those are on high alert and can be launched in minutes and reach any point on the planet in less than half an hour.

Russia and the U.S. have long been the dominant nuclear powers. Today, nearly 90 percent of all warheads belong to them…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The total power of the warheads in the nine nuclear-armed states is an inconceivable destructive force: equivalent to more than 4.8 trillion pounds of TNT — or more than 145,000 Hiroshima bombs. A single U.S. strategic submarine can carry enough warheads to destroy any country, and detonation of a few hundred weapons could propel enough dust and soot into the air to block sunshine, cool the atmosphere and halt crops from growing — “nuclear winter.” Such a sequence of events would lead to worldwide famine.

In her 2024 bestseller, “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” Annie Jacobsen draws on scientific research to describe a postapocalyptic world in which cities and forests burn, temperatures plunge, lakes and rivers freeze, crops and farm animals die, toxic chemicals poison the air, people succumb to radiation poisoning or disease. “Only time will tell if we humans will survive,” she writes.

Everyone makes mistakes

The next nuclear age will bring severe new tests. Without restraint, nations will be building ever more nuclear weapons, and the chances of mistakes or miscalculations will grow.

and the chances of mistakes or miscalculations will grow.

Each of the nine countries’ leaders and the systems they use to control nuclear weapons will have to get every decision right every time. Deterrence theory relies on the assumption that decision-makers are rational actors…………………………………………………

Time to wake up………………………………..

The future…………………

Without working treaties, legal limits or a mutual agreement to cap their forces, both the United States and Russia could double their deployed nuclear arsenals in a year or two without building a single new weapon. Each country could simply move several hundred warheads out of storage and redeploy them on missiles, bombers and submarines. ……………………..

While buildups proceed, nations are becoming more secretive about their nuclear weapons. During the first Trump administration, the U.S. reversed nearly a decade of transparency measures and refused to declassify the size of the American nuclear stockpile — a previously annual practice during Barack Obama’s administration. Britain immediately followed suit, in a highly out-of-character move from one of the most transparent nuclear-armed states. Our organization advocated that the Biden administration declassify its arsenal numbers, which it did in 2024 — a practice Trump will undoubtedly roll back.

………………………………………………………………………..Surviving this new nuclear age will require the constant and informed attention of leaders, policymakers and engaged citizens alike. 

………………………..In the early 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Europe and the United States to demand a nuclear freeze. These mass movements, coupled with the vision of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, ended the last arms race.

Without renewed public pressure or political will, the world is condemned to live under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. We deserve better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/us-russia-nuclear-weapons-proliferation-danger/

June 5, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war