Large-scale nuclear war sends large quantities of smoke into the stratosphere, causing severe global environmental effects including surface temperature declines and increased ultraviolet radiation. The temperature decline and the full set of environmental effects are known as nuclear winter. This paper surveys the range of actions that can confront the threat of nuclear winter, both now and in...

During World War II and the Cold War, the United States developed a complex of industrial facilities for the research, production, and testing of nuclear weapons. In addition, the United States government supported the development of nuclear energy for commercial applications and conducted research in high-energy physics and other basic sciences, as well as medical diagnostics and treatment. Th...

BACKGROUND Evidence on the relation between fear of war and mental health is insufficient. We carried out a prospective cohort study to find out whether fear of nuclear war is related to increased risk of common mental disorders. METHODS Within two months preceding the outbreak of Persian Gulf War in January 1991, 1518 adolescents [mean age 16.8 years, SD 0.9] filled in a self-administered qu...

A regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan could decrease global surface temperature by 1∘C–2∘C for 5–10 years and have major impacts on precipitation and solar radiation reaching Earth’s surface. Using a crop simulation model forced by three global climate model simulations, we investigate the impacts on agricultural production in China, the largest grain producer in the world. In the f...

Abstract Will AI-enabled capabilities increase inadvertent escalation risk? This article revisits Cold War-era thinking about to consider how Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology (especially AI augmentation of advanced conventional weapons) through various mechanisms and pathways could affect risk between nuclear-armed adversaries during a crisis or conflict. How might be incorporated into n...

trying chance here and system there, soaring, jumping, backtracking, crawling, sometimes freezing on point like a bird dog...[the decision-maker] exploits mental processes that are only slowly yielding to observation and systematic description. (p. 81) Is this fully rational? It is not. But Lindblom's point, which forms the psychological foundation for what he calls our policy "science of muddl...