{"id":429,"date":"2026-06-15T10:43:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=429"},"modified":"2026-06-15T10:43:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:43:26","slug":"risk-of-nuclear-catastrophe-is-worse-than-ever-we-can-change-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=429","title":{"rendered":"Risk of nuclear catastrophe is worse than ever. We can change that"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Half a lifetime ago, I had a crappy copyediting job that meant I had to drive for 90 minutes through traffic across the sprawling concrete wasteland of Phoenix. The job itself was boring and soulless, and after spending another 90 minutes getting home in my AC-free beater, I would slam several Miller High Lifes while watching the honeybees gather goodies from the invasive London rocket in my backyard. I liked seeing the fuzzy little pollinators making trips back and forth between those tiny yellow flowers because it made my own problems feel less significant, compared to insects trying to survive on plants that didn\u2019t belong in the desert and were themselves just trying to thrive in our overheated world. If the bees and the weeds were OK, I could be OK too.<\/p>\n

Read more Should you feel guilty about rooting against the US in the World Cup?<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, for anyone paying even a little attention, this era can feel extra-doomy. It\u2019s not just a byproduct of social media, 24\/7 cable news and our shared tendency to drowning in constant updates on the sorrows of the world. War, genocide, fascism and more terrible things seem to be trending upward, while our environment gradually loses the ability to sustain our species. In essence, the threat of global catastrophe has never been higher.<\/p>\n

As you can tell, people say I\u2019m really fun at parties. But it\u2019s all true. As much as I like dissociating with the latest season of \u201cRick and Morty\u201d or more of that beer plus bee-vision, there\u2019s a part of me that always lingers on the growing existential risks that face our world.<\/p>\n

The danger of nuclear war isn\u2019t top of mind for most people, but it\u2019s just as alarming, if not more, as climate change, unregulated AI and outbreaks of disease. Last week, a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that we\u2019re moving backward on the issue of nuclear proliferation in pretty much every way.<\/p>\n

Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons \u2014 the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, China, Pakistan, India and North Korea \u2014 and all of them are expanding and upgrading their nuclear arsenals, which now number approximately 12,187 warheads. Efforts to stop this proliferation are weakening and treaties are expiring. On June 9, the International \u200bCampaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons reported that those nine countries spent a collective $119 billion on nukes last year, with the U.S. spending the bulk of that ($69 billion), more than the eight others combined. If even one of those warheads were detonated, it would lead to catastrophe on a scale difficult to imagine and also probably would likely trigger a cascade of missiles and bombs that could make the planet all but uninhabitable.<\/p>\n

What can be done about this? I\u2019m not sure gazing at bugs will help, but there could be some value in returning to the roots of the issue. In the wake of the Manhattan Project that birthed the atomic era \u2014 and with it, the ever-present threat of nuclear war \u2014 people acted immediately to bring attention to this new threat. Out of these efforts came the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit academic journal that tries to raise attention to nuclear risks, climate change, biological threats and disruptive technologies.<\/p>\n

The Bulletin is best known for its Doomsday Clock, an attempt to gauge the likelihood of a global catastrophe. In January 2026, the clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we\u2019ve ever been to a designated zero hour. So the Bulletin\u2019s mission seems more critical than ever. John Mecklin, current editor in chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is retiring after 15 years. I spoke with him recently\u00a0 about combating despair, the dangers of ongoing conflicts such the Iran war, and what it would take to get our world to give up nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, when it was founded in 1945 the technology that could end civilization, at least globally, was nuclear atomic weapons, and that\u2019s what the scientists who founded the Bulletin were concerned about. But even early on it wasn\u2019t the only thing they were concerned about. Eugene Rabinowitch, the first editor of the Bulletin, wrote about the Pandora\u2019s box of technology that modern science would open. There would be other technologies that have the same global civilization-ending possibilities, and the Bulletin really began talking about climate change as one of those technology-based existential threats in the late 1950s, really. The first Bulletin cover story on climate change was in 1978 \u2014 a long time before anybody else was looking at it.<\/p>\n

The Bulletin has always covered a whole range of scientific issues that relate to human society and policy matters. Climate was formally adopted as something we cover, I think, in 2007, as was biotechnology, which back then primarily meant biological warfare. Both the Soviet Union and the United States had some form of biowarfare research, and both always claimed it was defensive. They were making defenses against other evil people who might engage in biological warfare. Later, that biological element was sort of reconfigured into something known as \u201cdisruptive technologies.\u201d So the Bulletin now covers nuclear weapons and nuclear science, climate change and this grab bag of disruptive technologies. That includes biological technologies, AI, and some things to do with nanotechnology, but basically any technology that reaches the level where it could be considered a threat to civilization. Maybe not enough to make humans go extinct. I mean, a few humans might continue living at the end of a nuclear war, but civilization would be over. Nothing like the way we live would be possible after a full-scale nuclear war.<\/p>\n

It is escalating for all sorts of reasons. Primarily, the problem is that leaders of the world\u2019s major countries aren\u2019t doing anything as these threats continue, expand and intersect. In the United States, for instance, the Trump administration is going backward on climate change, even though it\u2019s a severe threat that would end civilization if we don\u2019t address it. Not only is it not addressing it, it\u2019s going the other direction.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAfter all that effort to end that extremely costly and senseless arms race during the Cold War, we\u2019re right back in the middle of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

All three major nuclear powers have just \u2026 Well, China never joined any arms control treaties. The United States and Russia have just ended all the treaties that were created over a period of many decades to constrain nuclear arsenals, so now there are no constraints. What\u2019s going to happen is very unclear, but in some sense, after all that effort to end that extremely costly and senseless arms race, we\u2019re right back in the middle of it. And I mean, very stupidly, the U.S. and China are in an arms race related to artificial intelligence, which doesn\u2019t have to be. Smart leaders would negotiate some way of not making it an extremely expensive, unproductive and dangerous arms race, but Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are not the kind of people who we need, frankly, to reduce the threat.<\/p>\n

Well, that\u2019s what I\u2019ve spent the last 15 years of my life trying to do, and it is difficult but not impossible. I mean, the Bulletin has a reach roughly 15 or 20 times larger than when I came on as head editor in 2014. So it\u2019s not that people can\u2019t be interested in this. It\u2019s a combination of a lot of media that don\u2019t cover it very much or very well because it\u2019s offputting. It\u2019s kind of scary. It doesn\u2019t get you the clicks of cat videos and rappers dating other rappers and stuff like that. So part of it is the media environment being completely polluted with disinformation and misinformation, but part of it is political reality. It\u2019s connected to how important this is to the general population. If it\u2019s important enough, they will push the politicians to care about it and do something about it. That has happened in the past.<\/p>\n

So it is a difficult dilemma, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s one that\u2019s unsolvable. It\u2019s just that it needs more direct attention from the media, and then I think the activist community that works on these issues hasn\u2019t been very effective. Climate has become a movement, but the nuclear movement, frankly, needs people who are better activists. There are lots of little activist groups on the nuclear side, but I don\u2019t see them as moving the general public or politicians very effectively. So the activism community needs to get better, the media community needs to get better, and the politicians who care about this need to be more active about leading on it.<\/p>\n

There are a handful of people in Congress who introduce measures about nuclear weapons once a year. But that\u2019s about all they do, some sort of pro forma legislation that has zero chance of passing and that nobody pays attention to.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThink about the amount of money pushing to have more nuclear weapons and more defense spending. It is vast. In comparison to what the anti-nuclear community has, it is enormous. It\u2019s the same with climate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s an interconnected system. Let\u2019s just take it into two big areas, nuclear weapons and climate change. Think about the amount of money pushing to have more nuclear weapons and more defense spending. It is vast. In comparison to what the anti-nuclear community has, it is enormous, and it\u2019s the same with climate. The oil and gas industry has vast resources, and now the high-tech industry has vast resources, and they are all putting their dollars into fending off anything like regulation or common sense in regard to nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

I mean, the idea that we need to build new plutonium pits, meaning new triggers for nuclear weapons, is utterly ridiculous. We absolutely do not. We have thousands of these in storage, and we have studies that show they don\u2019t degrade in a dangerous way. We don\u2019t need any new plutonium pits, but we\u2019re spending billions to build them. It\u2019s just the stupidest program the government has ever engaged in, but do you see the media paying attention? Do you see politicians saying, \u201cWhat a stupid program\u201d? No, because the only people who care about those programs come from South Carolina, where one of the pit production sites will be, and New Mexico, where Los Alamos National Lab will get to start building plutonium pits again. So the only people in Congress who care about that are the members from those states who push for it. Nobody else gives a damn. So this really, really stupid thing happens.<\/p>\n

This is multiplied many times over throughout defense spending and dealing with climate change. Those are realities that the media, the activist community and people in government need to come to grips with. It is not an impossible task. When something is that stupid, that wasteful, other members of Congress need to stand up against the people pushing it. Now, it\u2019s a difficult problem because so many people in Congress feed off the defense budget, right? They have jobs in their states.<\/p>\n

It is difficult, but journalists need to be more strategic. It is not a hard target to explain to people that the Trump administration just asked for a 50% increase in the defense budget: $500 billion. This is absolutely absurd, and they haven\u2019t even explained what the hell they would spend it on. I doubt the military can even absorb that, but we\u2019re well on our way to enacting a $1.5 trillion defense budget when the United States is already spending many times more than the nearest competitor on defense.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an absolute absurdity, and an easy target. But you do not see that leading the New York Times or the Washington Post or any other major media. It\u2019s obscene, and I understand the difficulty of the Trump administration flooding the zone with obscene and crazy things, so that it\u2019s difficult to focus. But $500 billion could go a long way toward solving a lot of American problems. If we\u2019re going to spend $500 billion, we could probably cover most of the country with healthcare. It\u2019s just a huge amount of money, and everybody\u2019s sort of shrugging their shoulders. I think a more thoughtful approach by the media, by activists and by politicians can bring about change. I wouldn\u2019t have done this for 15 years if I didn\u2019t think that.<\/p>\n

Well, I listen to people\u2019s critiques, and they\u2019re welcome to them. My response is generally, OK, the Doomsday Clock explains the reality of existential risk to an audience somewhere in the range of the high tens of millions or low hundreds of millions of people. What else you got that reaches that many people and explains existential risk to them?<\/p>\n

Read more \u201cLet the oil flow!\u201d: Trump announces Iran-US ceasefire deal<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Doomsday Clock explains the reality of existential risk to an audience somewhere in the range of the high tens of millions or low hundreds of millions of people. What else you got that reaches that many people?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This is an unique thing in the world. We can catch the attention of the entire world for an extended news cycle and get them to focus on these issues, at least somewhat. If people are saying, \u201cOh, it\u2019s just a gimmick, you shouldn\u2019t do it,\u201d I\u2019d say that\u2019s an absurd argument at its core. Yes, it\u2019s a metaphor. No, it\u2019s not a scientific calculation. But it\u2019s a judgment by \u2014 I think it\u2019s 18 top experts in these fields, really the best of the best. What are you going to substitute for that judgment to tell people what they should care about? Pete Hegseth?<\/p>\n

My science and security board set the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it\u2019s ever been, in significant part because they view the nuclear risk as very extreme for a lot of different, complicated reasons. In the three major biggest nuclear countries, the United States, Russia and China, the people involved with those nuclear forces know that a purposeful attack is essentially suicidal. They know that a full-out nuclear war would end civilization, so the risk isn\u2019t so much a purposeful sneak attack by one country against one or two of the others, it\u2019s a miscalculation. Some country\u2019s sensors falsely indicate there\u2019s an attack underway, so there\u2019s a mistaken response, then a response to the response, or somebody uses a \u201csmall\u201d or tactical nuclear weapon, just one or two to get some kind of result.<\/p>\n

Apparently Russia was considering that, at a point during the Ukraine war when it looked like some of its fronts were going to get completely overrun. Just the use of one or two. Most war games show that it won\u2019t stop there, it will escalate into full nuclear war. So those pathways of accidental miscalculation, or a small use of weapons, that escalates into a bigger use.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to say that all the nuclear countries are led by level-headed, wise, deep-thinking people. They aren\u2019t. There could be an attempted small use of nuclear weapons. There could be mistakes. There could be individual commanders who have some ability on their own to launch a nuclear attack that could start an escalatory process. From my knowledge, some Pakistani individual commanders can use battlefield nuclear weapons on their own. They aren\u2019t entirely centrally controlled, particularly in times of high tension. If Pakistan used a nuclear weapon against India, and India responded would that drag in the whole world? Would that escalate to a worldwide nuclear war? It\u2019s hard to say. It could, you know, given the ties between China and Pakistan and the U.S. and India.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe risk isn\u2019t so much a purposeful sneak nuclear attack by one country against one or two of the others. It\u2019s a miscalculation, a mistaken response, and then a response to the response. Or somebody uses a \u2018small\u2019 or tactical nuclear weapon, just one or two.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So it\u2019s a very real risk that could be reduced, and the reason my board thinks it\u2019s so extreme is that the risk is not being reduced. Leaders are not engaging in serious talks about things that could be done. You don\u2019t even necessarily need new treaties, just agreements on notifications, and agreements to continue to abide by arsenal limits that were in previous arms control agreements. There are things that could be done and they\u2019re just not being done at all. That\u2019s why I think it\u2019s a dangerous time on the nuclear front.<\/p>\n

Well, I have always felt that I had the best job in the world. I get to go to work every day to try to save the world, to try to educate people about all these issues, to give them the information to influence the people in their governments to do better, and to do the right thing. In a couple months I won\u2019t be the editor of the Bulletin, but that doesn\u2019t mean I won\u2019t feel the same way.<\/p>\n

To stop trying to reduce the risk, to stop caring and advocating for what\u2019s sensible policy, that\u2019s just, as has been said, letting the terrorists win, letting the warmongers and the climate deniers win. It doesn\u2019t affect me mentally that the world is in a bad situation. I just view it as a challenge. It\u2019s fixable. Humans can undo what they\u2019ve done, it just requires will, caring. Anything can be changed. It is fixable.<\/p>\n

I mean, think about this: In 1991 and 1992 the Russian and U.S. leaders unilaterally, on their own, got rid of thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons just by agreeing to. They didn\u2019t have to do big long treaty negotiations or whatever. They just talked. They had their top advisers talk, and they just got rid of those weapons, disabled them, put them in storage. The difference is, now we have people who aren\u2019t that wise in power. These leaders are clearly not up to the task, so we need new ones.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a false example. Ukraine had nuclear weapons stationed on its territory that were the Soviet Union\u2019s weapons. The keys were in Moscow. Ukraine had no ability to use those nuclear weapons, and gave them back as part of an agreement to assure, first of all, that it be allowed to be an independent country.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt doesn\u2019t affect me mentally that the world is in a bad situation. I just view it as a challenge. It\u2019s fixable. Humans can undo what they\u2019ve done, it just requires will, caring. Anything can be changed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Yeah, they tried to have a security agreement, and the Russians absolutely violated that security agreement that went along with giving the nuclear weapons back to Moscow. But the Ukrainians couldn\u2019t use them anyway, and would it have mattered if they had a few? Would Russia have stopped trying to reincorporate Ukraine into Russia if Ukraine had a few nuclear weapons? No. This is an ideological obsession of Vladimir Putin\u2019s. He thinks the breakup of the Soviet Union was a catastrophic historical mistake, and his mission in life is to, in some way, reconstitute that Russian Empire or Soviet Union. So the idea that having a nuclear arsenal would have protected Ukraine, is just \u2014 in my mind, they didn\u2019t have one anyway, and trying to create one would have caused Russia to invade sooner. I just think it\u2019s kind of a phony argument.<\/p>\n

Nuclear proliferation just multiplies the odds that there\u2019s going to be a mistake or miscalculation that causes nuclear weapons to be used, so the world should definitely be focused on not allowing more nuclear countries. So in that regard, I think the focus on making sure that Iran doesn\u2019t get a nuclear weapon is correct. It\u2019s just the way the Trump administration and the Netanyahu administration have gone about it is as dumb as it gets. It is absolutely thoughtless, shallow and unwise in every way you can imagine. That\u2019s just not the way that would work, ever, to make sure that, long term, Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. And now it\u2019s just a mess. I don\u2019t know how to get out of it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fuzzy area. It\u2019s like, were the United States and Russia at war during Vietnam? Are the West and Russia at war over Ukraine? You can call those proxy wars, but they\u2019re wars where nuclear-armed countries are on opposite sides. They\u2019re doing things to keep it below the level of nuclear war, which I guess is good.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very complicated idea: Do nuclear weapons create security or create danger? Rather than engage in the philosophical, I stick to the practical. The current nuclear countries could reduce their arsenals by a lot, without losing anything in terms of deterrence. They could enter agreements that made accidental wars, and wars by miscalculation or misapprehension, far less dangerous. Then the world can continue to enforce the nonproliferation regime, so that more nuclear countries don\u2019t spring up. Those things can reduce the risk.<\/p>\n

If you start to get into the philosophical, well, how low can you go? How do you get to zero nuclear weapons? It gets almost theological, or theoretical. If Russia, the United States, and China all agreed to cut their arsenals to 200, how would you go to zero after that without any of those countries feeling like they were leaving themselves vulnerable? Because there are nine countries with nuclear weapons. If you went to zero, and even if, like the United States, you have a huge conventional capacity, would some other country with 20, 30 or 40 nuclear warheads be a real threat? I try to focus on practical ways that the risk can be reduced.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think the focus on making sure that Iran doesn\u2019t get a nuclear weapon is correct. It\u2019s just the way the Trump administration and the Netanyahu administration have gone about it is as dumb as it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You can go to the Doomsday Clock statements published every year and read the practical ways that the risk could be reduced. There are real things that could make the world less dangerous. It\u2019s just we need wiser, smarter, better leaders, who are, frankly, less mercenary. People point to Donald Trump and his money and the apparent corruption of his regime, but Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia is a kleptocracy. He may be the richest man in the world. He has stolen the wealth of his country. China is full of corruption and state-level companies that are just looting the place.<\/p>\n

All three of these countries have their own forms of military-industrial complex, so all three countries need leaders who are aware of that and can maneuver around it, and who will oppose it when it\u2019s really important to oppose it. That doesn\u2019t exist right now, and I don\u2019t think real improvements can happen without it. It\u2019s simple, almost to the point of simple-mindedness, but we need better leaders.<\/p>\n

No, I believe people are basically good. I think the last 10 years of the American experience has shown that the American public is quite unsophisticated in large parts of it. Quite poorly educated, quite easily misled, perhaps less than enlightened. But I\u2019ve traveled around the country, I\u2019ve known a lot of people, I\u2019ve lived in \u201cred states\u201d or whatever. I think people are basically good, and I think they don\u2019t want the world to end, and they don\u2019t have some empathy deficit, as you put it. They may not be able to connect to people in other countries, because they\u2019re unsophisticated. A lot of Americans have never been to another country, they\u2019ve never had any experience of other people. People are tribal, but I think they are basically good, and that good can be harnessed. It has been at other times in American history. We\u2019re just living in a time where our leaders have not harnessed that goodness.<\/p>\n

Read more \u201cYou\u2019d think we would\u2019ve learned that lesson by now\u201d: Obama says US can\u2019t \u201cbomb\u201d way to Iran deal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says the doomsday threat is real \u2014 but human goodness will win out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[696,400,105,697,698,699,700],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists","tag-interview","tag-iran-war","tag-john-mecklin","tag-nuclear-war","tag-russia","tag-united-states"],"yoast_head":"\nRisk of nuclear catastrophe is worse than ever. 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