Reasons to Fear, Reasons to Hope: The Nuclear Threat after 80 Years
by John Whitehead
The nuclear threat is now 80 years old. Nuclear weapons became a reality with the first successful test of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity test, in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.
These weapons’ ability to destroy human lives and societies was demonstrated with horrific clarity a few weeks later when two American-made nuclear bombs were used against two Japanese cities: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. How many people were killed by the two bombings remains unclear to this day: one post-war estimate put the number of people killed in the bombings and their near aftermath at roughly 100,000; later estimates put the number at roughly 200,000. By either estimate, though, the bombs were unambiguously devastating.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY
As the United States and other nations built more nuclear weapons, these weapons would go on to destroy lives through their production and testing. Nevertheless, since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have never again, to date, been used in wartime to destroy cities or other targets.
For 80 years now, a war fought with nuclear weapons has been a real possibility. Over these years, humanity has lived with the knowledge that nuclear war, if it ever occurred, could kill unprecedented numbers of people, cause catastrophic genetic and environmental damage to our world, and ultimately destroy humanity. Everything humans have been or have built over hundreds of thousands of years could be wiped out in a matter of hours by nuclear weapons.
This anniversary year, which marks eight decades since the invention of nuclear weapons, is an apt time to reflect on the nuclear threat. What is the status of the threat today, and what does this mean for all of us?
Reasons to Fear
A survey of the world in 2025 gives significant reasons to fear that a nuclear war might occur. The number of nations that possess nuclear weapons has grown from the original one, the United States, to include eight other nations: Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Many of these nuclear nations are mired in deep conflicts that could escalate to the nuclear level.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has set the United States, Britain, and France against Russia. During the war, in the fall of 2022, when the Russian invaders were losing ground to a Ukrainian counter-attack, American officials reportedly feared Russia might resort to nuclear weapons. Russia did not use nuclear weapons at that time, but as the war continues, the possibility of their future use remains.
US-China relations have been tense for years. Against this backdrop of international tension, China may be building more nuclear weapons, perhaps in an attempt to deter the United States or gain more influence in the world. The ongoing rivalry, aggravated by nuclear competition, could someday flare up into nuclear conflict.
India and Pakistan have been adversaries since their founding and have fought multiple wars. As recently as this past May, hostility between the two nuclear-armed nations broke out into open military conflict before thankfully being stopped by a ceasefire. The next outbreak of hostilities might not end that way, though.
North Korea’s fractious relationship with South Korea and the United States is another potential flashpoint for nuclear conflict. Even conflicts involving states that do not yet possess nuclear weapons raise ominous questions: Will the recent bombing campaign by Israel and the United States against Iran lead Iran to make an all-out effort to build nuclear weapons? If so, what will a Middle East with multiple nuclear weapons-armed states mean for the future?
Amid this array of conflicts and tensions, the network of international treaties meant to limit and regulate nuclear weapons has been unravelling for years. The United States, under President George W. Bush’s administration, decided to leave the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had limited this potentially destabilizing technology.
More recently, during President Donald Trump’s first term, the United States left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which had abolished a particular type of nuclear weapon. The New START Treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear weapons is set to expire in February 2026, and renewal of the treaty is far from likely. The legal barriers to an unrestrained nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia are falling away.
Given all these circumstances, a recent decision by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that has sounded the alarm about nuclear weapons almost since their invention, makes sense. The Bulletin has long provided regular assessments of nuclear and other dangers to humanity. These assessments are visually represented by a “Doomsday Clock”: the graver the Bulletin assesses global dangers to be, the closer the clock is set to midnight. This year, the Bulletin set the clock at 89 seconds to midnight.
Reasons to Hope
The current dire conditions make pessimism or even despair tempting. Such responses would be mistaken, though, because the dangers today are only part of the story.
More important than any of the disturbing events or trends above is the central, inescapable fact that we’re still here. Humans still exist, and we still have the power to shape future events.
Further, the time that has passed since nuclear weapons were invented is a sign of hope. For eight decades, we have lived with the power to annihilate ourselves—and we have not done it. In the past, we have been through crises and tense periods as serious as what we are facing today, during which nuclear war was highly probable. Yet we did not fall into the abyss. We did not start a nuclear war.
The history of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union offers a clear example of how nuclear dangers can be averted. In the early 1980s, combined US and Soviet nuclear weapons arsenals numbered almost 70,000. Given the extraordinary hostility between the two nations, the idea of major reductions in nuclear weapons seemed absurd. Nuclear war between the two nations seemed far more likely.
Nevertheless, within a few years after this period of extreme danger, the Cold War effectively ended. The United States and the Soviet Union (and then its successor state Russia) began radically reducing their nuclear weapons down to roughly 8,000 weapons combined.
Granting that current nuclear weapons arsenals still pose a serious threat, we should not overlook the extraordinary accomplishment of these earlier weapons reductions. What had been a ridiculous dream became a reality in less than a decade.
Humans’ 80 years of survival since the invention of nuclear weapons should not be a cause of complacency. We need to work against the nuclear threat today.
However, these years of survival and past accomplishments, such as earlier nuclear weapons reductions, are a crucial reminder that catastrophe is not inevitable. The mere fact that nuclear weapons were invented and used in 1945 does not mean we are doomed to use them again in the future.
Other signs of hope are the efforts made by so many people all over the world to reduce or end the nuclear threat. A global campaign created the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits the use or even possession of such weapons. Ninety-four nations have signed the treaty, which demonstrates that a huge section of humanity is not prepared simply to accept the ongoing threat from nuclear weapons.
Within the United States, the Back from the Brink Campaign is working to reduce the nuclear threat by advocating for policy changes that will make nuclear war less likely. Many of these policy recommendations have been incorporated into legislation currently before the US Congress: H.Res 317 in the House of Representatives and S.Res.323 in the Senate. American citizens can take action by urging their representatives and senators to support these resolutions.
These initiatives, together with the larger fact of humanity’s survival, should encourage us. The nuclear threat today is grave and requires a response. We should support efforts to respond to the threat.
We should act now to ensure that we can continue, 20, 50, and 100 years from now, to celebrate humanity’s survival. We should act now so that one day we can look back on the nuclear threat as a threat we have overcome.
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The Consistent Life Network will be co-sponsoring a peace vigil outside the White House in Washington, DC, on August 9, the 80th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. Please join us as we remember the lives destroyed by nuclear weapons and advocate for peace in our world. If you would like to attend, contact John Whitehead at jwwhiteh@yahoo.com.
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We have an extensive list of posts on nuclear weapons, which you can find under that category All Blog Posts
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