There are so many things to worry about in the world at any time. As to the biggest existential threats at the moment, experts generally rank the biggest risks as, first and foremost, nuclear war. This risk that had us doing drills hiding under our desks sixty-five years ago is still the most immediate way civilization could end quickly, especially with tensions around Russia/Ukraine, and flashpoints in East Asia and South Asia….and now, the Middle East. But let’s consider the other things we have to worry about as well. In recent memory, there’s pandemics, both natural (next big one) and engineered (bioweapons or lab accidents), especially as biotech gets cheaper and more accessible and as we still recover from our COVID experience. Then there’s the ever-present climate change, which may be less of a sudden extinction risk, and more a slow-moving multiplier that stresses food systems, migration, and political stability over decades, but every once in a while a heat wave, wildfire, wildfire smoke, hurricane, tsunami or derecho hits and we feel it all a lot more in the here and now. And let’s not forget advancing AI. Just this week we had the pleasure of hearing about two AI bots that escaped their “sandbox” and snuck into the internet to attack a company that makes AI tools. It felt a lot like a jailbreak with the convicts trying to get into the armory…right? The AI risks range from misuse (AI-enabled bioweapons, cyberattacks) to loss-of-control scenarios if systems become highly capable and hard to steer… or so sneaky that we can’t keep track of them as they go their own way for their own purposes. This AI concern is contested, with some researchers seeing it as top-tier urgent, while others think it’s overhyped relative to nearer-term harms. I suppose it’s like worrying about a tsunami…not so imminent until you can see it on the horizon…and then, of course, its too late to worry about it, you need to just think about surviving it.
Other serious risks that are usually ranked lower on the concern spectrum include large-scale ecological collapse (biodiversity loss, ocean acidification), global financial/systemic economic collapse (I’ve lived at the leading of that one a few times), asteroid impacts or supervolcanoes (very low probability, catastrophic if they happened, but pretty spectacular in a big action-movie kinda way), and the constant niggle these days of democratic backsliding / great-power conflict more broadly, which we have witnessed rising dramatically under our fearless and witless leader of the moment, raising the odds of almost all of the above listed risks rather dramatically. It’s clear that reasonable people disagree a lot on the ranking of all of these risks. Someone like a biosecurity researcher or medical professional (especially those who lived through the trauma of COVID) probably rank pandemics first. An AI safety researcher or someone who has already lost their job to the changing tech environment will likely rank AI first among the threats. And a climate scientist or naturalist will emphasize how climate compounds everything else. There’s less disagreement about the list itself than about which one is most urgent right now.
Perhaps because of our upbringing during the Cold War and living through those thirteen days of October in 1962 (when I was eight years old and old enough to remember being trundled into the boys locker room showers to hide during a drill), or maybe because of events like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island…or yet again, maybe because of the invisible and pernicious nature of radiation poisoning, so the nuclear threat and its immediacy is never far from the top of everyone’s worry list. One of the aspects of this is that these thoughts are hard-wired into current culture. We all know that there is a “nuclear football” that is manned by some military officer who follows the every movement of the President of the United States so that he can launch a nuclear attack or retaliate against one at the drop of a hat. We have also all joked about the man with his finger on the button and understand just how easy it is to launch nuclear annihilation. Eco-disasters, pandemics, democratic disintegration, financial Armageddon and even asteroids give us warnings and/or take time to unfold. In theory that gives us time to get our affairs in order and possibly avert disaster, but a nuclear spaz-out is pretty immediate and horribly final in its determination…and there is no way to come back from it once the boo-boo is perpetrated. That alone makes the nuclear threat the most difficult to get past.
Harry Truman is the only human being to ever make the decision to push the button. Truman’s views were shaped directly by being that person to have ordered atomic bombs used in war (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945), and he wrestled with that weight for the rest of his life. He defended the decision to drop the bombs as necessary to end WWII quickly and avoid a costly invasion of Japan that could have cost hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives. He never publicly expressed regret for that specific decision, framing it as a grim military necessity, but he was deeply wary of further nuclear escalation. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he grew increasingly uneasy about the scale of destruction atomic weapons represented. He reportedly called the bomb “the most terrible thing ever discovered.” He resisted using nuclear weapons again, even under pressure. During the Korean War, General MacArthur pushed for using atomic bombs against China but Truman refused and eventually fired MacArthur partly over this insubordination. He understood nuclear weapons as fundamentally different from conventional arms. They were something to be held in reserve…as a deterrent, not treated as just a bigger bomb. He pushed for civilian (not military) control of nuclear weapons domestically, backing the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which established the Atomic Energy Commission, reflecting his instinct that this technology was too dangerous to leave solely in military hands. He was genuinely alarmed by the hydrogen bomb. When the US developed the far more powerful H-bomb (a decision made in 1950 under his presidency and first tested in 1952), Truman approved development mainly out of fear the Soviets would get there first. It was a “have to, not want to” logic that previewed the entire Cold War arms race dynamic. Later in life, Truman reflected that nuclear weapons had changed the nature of warfare and human conflict itself, making all-out war between major powers essentially unwinnable and civilization-threatening…a true extinction event. His core stance was pragmatic rather than moralistic. He was acutely aware that it posed a genuine existential threat, a tension he never fully resolved.
Nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons, what are called Recognized nuclear-weapon states (NPTs). They are Russia ( with the largest arsenal, roughly 5,459 total warheads), the United States (5,177 total nuclear weapons), China (estimated total of 600 warheads), France (roughly 300 active warheads), and the United Kingdom. Those five have signed the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). In addition, another four have never signed the NPT. They are India, Pakistan, Israel (maintains a longstanding policy of deliberate ambiguity, never officially confirming or denying possession), and North Korea (who technically signed the NPT and then pulled out in 2003 and has tested weapons since). Together, these nine countries hold roughly 12,500 warheads total, far below the Cold War peak of about 70,000, though experts expect the number to climb over the next decade as modern arsenals grow more capable. Russia and the US alone control about 87% of the world’s total inventory. A few countries like South Africa, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan once had nuclear weapons or hosted Soviet ones but gave them up. Iran remains the most closely watched non-nuclear state given ongoing enrichment concerns, though it isn’t currently classified as possessing weapons. And now, thanks to Donald Trump…perhaps Saudi Arabia will soon have them.
We cannot seem to escape the nuclear life.