nuclear war

Across the 75 years since something—something—crashed outside Roswell in early July 1947, the very name itself has taken on a life of its own: Today, it’s shorthand for UFOs, extraterrestrials, and a vast government conspiracy, perhaps even where the very idea of the deep state itself was born. The city of 50,000 in southeastern New Mexico, about three hours from Albuquerque and El Paso, has leaned into its infamy: There’s a UFO museum, a space walk, and even a flying-saucer-shaped McDonald’s, not to mention any number of…

Seeking his counsel, Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal his universal form. Krishna obliges, and in verse 12 of the Gita he manifests as a sublime, terrifying being of many mouths and eyes. It is this moment that entered Oppenheimer’s mind in July 1945. “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one,” was Oppenheimer’s translation of that moment in the desert of New Mexico.In Hinduism, which has a non-linear concept of time, the great god is involved in…

Flattened cities, millions of people burnt to death, and yet more tortured by radioactive fallout. That harrowing future may seem outlandish to some, but only because no nation has detonated a nuclear weapon in conflict since 1945. Countries including the US, Russia, and China wield hefty nuclear arsenals and regularly squabble over how to manage them—only last week, Russia suspended participation in its nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US. Thankfully, nuclear warheads mostly just sit there, motionless and silent,…

But let’s be honest: Most people, even in the moderate damage zone, won’t survive. Hardly anyone lives or works in nearly windowless reinforced-concrete buildings, nor in the vicinity of a concrete bunker. (Even people at a bank would have to get into the vault to be in the safest place; people in a subway would get the most benefit in a station that’s very deep underground.) Most people live in timber-frame or other less-armored buildings. This shouldn’t be construed as a way to be safe in a nuclear explosion, says Dylan…

Putting a percentage on the likelihood of a nuclear disaster can feel icky—like you’re boiling down the immensity of human suffering into a spreadsheet. “I think what people dislike about this is that people are thinking about the unthinkable,” says Spieghalter. But confronting the unthinkable is unavoidable if we want to reduce the risk of nuclear war now and in the future. “The risk of nuclear war is probably much higher than many of us might want to assume,” says Anders Sandberg, who researches risk at the University…

The one thing that all human civilizations have in common is that they end. For 10,000 years or so, that's been the common factor. You can make an argument that civilizations tend not to last very long once they get to a certain level of tech. When they get to the point where they would be able to send probes out across the galaxy, or communicate at the speed of light, they don't last long in that stage. You've made a lot of technological advances, and with something like nuclear weapons or climate change, you start to be…