The Doomsday Clock is an internationally recognized design that conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging... Read More
As people seek to contain rising carbon levels, they may derive increasing amounts of energy from biomass. But land is a finite resource. Food insecurity is already severe in many poor countries.
A nuclear detonation's aftermath would be ghastly. Mitigating the humanitarian disaster would stretch the resources of any nation. But what would a detonation mean for countries that struggle merely to feed their people?
The authors calculate that some 125,000 nuclear warheads have been built since 1945, about 97 percent of them by the United States and the Soviet Union and Russia.
Though US nuclear policy seeks "to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons," it doesn't exclude their use against states that help terrorists obtain weapons of mass destruction.
In the developing world, women and their families often struggle because they lack access to modern energy. Women's days are taken up with menial tasks; children quit school because they can't study at night; everyone's health suffers.
Recent research has revealed new facts about the British nuclear arsenal over a 25-year period starting in 1953. This accounting and the authors’ own research support an estimate that the British produced about 1,250 nuclear warheads between 1953 and 2013.
Jamal Khaer IbrahimRajeswari Pillai RajagopalanIbrahim Said Ibrahim
For decades, arms control experts have envisioned a world in which ordinary people could verify treaty compliance. With the emergence of smartphones and social networks, this world may be ready to materialize. But are developing nations ready for citizen verification?
Russia is in the middle of modernizing its nuclear forces, replacing Soviet-era ballistic missiles with fewer improved missiles. In a decade, almost all Soviet-era weapons will be gone, leaving a smaller but still effective force that will be more mobile than what it replaced.
As of early 2013, the United States has continued to reduce its nuclear stockpile, and retirement alone has accounted for a dip of over 250 warheads since last year. Of the total stockpile of approximately 4,650 warheads, an estimated 2,150 warheads are deployed.
A number of high-profile initiatives seek to reduce the possibility of nuclear proliferation and terrorism by minimizing the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civilian applications.
