2024 was the year we learned to fear nuclear weapons again

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has lived under the threat of nuclear fire. The power to launch that nuclear weapon on Earth has been in the hands of one man, but for decades society has been able to safely ignore the threat, however, something has changed and people have learned to fear them once again.

I’ve been covering nuclear weapons for a decade now, and I’ve watched it turn into major news in 2024. The amount of nuclear stories and public interest in nuclear weapons has changed.

Every time Vladimir Putin issues a vague threat, a a cascade of stories hits the news. Every progress report to Congress Chinese nuclear arsenal now receives national press coverage. three weeks ago 60 minutes cut off some of its nuclear cover of the last decade and released it as long video on YouTube. The New York Times has spent the last year doing some incredible publishing investigative journalism about nuclear weapons. One of the biggest TV shows of the year is an adaptation of a video game set in a post-nuclear wasteland.

How did we get here? How did nuclear weapons go from a Cold War curiosity to a mainstream public concern? These weapons have been hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles all my life, but people have generally ignored them.

Matt Korda, who tracks nuclear weapons for the Federation of American Scientists, pointed to television shows such as FspaceThe New York Times’ nuclear coverage and the doom that dominates American life. The apocalypse is on people’s minds a lot,” he said.

last year, Oppenheimer told the story of the birth of nuclear weapons.A few months later, Amazon released Fallout, a nihilistic and absurd journey through a nuclear-ravaged California desert.Both were huge hits.

Korda also pointed to the election, especially when it was between Biden and Trump. “They were both very old. “Both parties were trying to claim that the other candidate was historically dangerous for the country. There were signs of devaluation on both sides,” he said.

“I have to think that it had a real impact on people who realized that one of these two people is going to be in charge of a very destructive nuclear arsenal, and there are serious problems with both of them,” Korda said realized that the nuclear system we have deployed is designed specifically to concentrate power in the hands of one individual.”

As Biden leaves office, he is 82 years old. Trump will be 78 when he takes office and 82 when he leaves. Putin is now 72. Earlier this week, the New York Times published a poll on the president’s ability to launch nuclear weapons. The Times asked all 530 incoming members of Congress how they felt about the president’s ability to launch nuclear weapons. end all life on Earth. The answers provide an interesting part of understanding the opinion.

It was uncomfortable for many that the president launched a nuclear weapon as a first strike, but fine that the president launched nukes in response. Democrats called Trump erratic. Republicans pointed to Biden’s diminished abilities. Some gave nuanced and complex answers about containment, escalation, and sole powers. Many did not respond, and some gave yes or no answers, but those who answered in depth did so thoughtfully.

It’s something that’s on their mind.

Nuclear threats were part of the first Trump administration, that’s right. But the talk of nuclear weapons is different now, and the scaremongering of the first Trump administration was that it was mostly about North Korea , that fire and fury in the fall of 2017 and then, of course, all the negotiations that ultimately failed with Kim Jong-un throughout his presidency,” Congressman arms control veteran and research professor at George Washington University told Gizmodo.

He also pointed to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Putin’s constant drumming up of nuclear threats as something that inspires fear.

“The other thing that went along with it is the collapse of all these arms control treaties,” Squashoni said. For decades, a series of arms control treaties between the U.S. and Russia escalated tensions. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, America even helped Russia dismantle its nuclear weapons and use nuclear material inside its nuclear power plants. that’s it.

During the first Trump administration, America withdrew from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, ending the two countries’ intermediate-range nuclear weapons pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty, which allows rival countries to openly monitor each other to prevent misunderstandings.In 2023, Russia withdrew from the nuclear weapons test ban.

The only remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia is now the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). This Obama-era agreement limits the number of nuclear warheads that both countries can deploy. It will expire in 2026, unless the two sides agree to extend it. But its use requires both sides to allow their rivals to inspect nuclear weapons facilities. Putin has already said he will not allow the treaty to be enforced and it will likely die.

Added to this is the fact that America, Russia and China are all building up their nuclear arsenals.China is digging holes in its deserts to fill with new intercontinental ballistic missiles. America is modernizing its force and is preparing to spend billions on its own silos and ICBMs. Russia is testing a new nuclear cruise missile and recently launched a new type the use of a medium-range ballistic missile in the direction of Ukraine in November.

“We’re in a new nuclear arms race. This is not just rhetoric,” former congressional staffer turned anti-proliferation watchdog Joseph Cirincione told Gizmodo in nine countries. Most popular in the US, Russia and China.”

According to Cirincione, the US spends $70 billion a year on new nuclear weapons, and an additional $30 billion on anti-missile defense systems, which has a tangible impact on the communities where they are spent are the reality of the places where they exist.

To build its new Sentinel-class ICBMs, the U.S. will have to dig massive new silos and build huge underground facilities in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and North Dakota. Different parts of this project will affect 23 different states where silos are being built , contractors will build temporary cities accommodate the flow of workers. General Dynamics, a contractor working on new nuclear submarines, visits schools teach students what it means to work in the nuclear industry and build a submarine in the future.

All this has its effect on public consciousness. What used to be an ancient weapon of a bygone era is back with a vengeance. It’s not some abstract weapon of war, but an integral part of American society. It’s part of the myth we tell ourselves after World War II. which, some say, protects us from larger and more terrible wars.

“I think nuclear weapons hold a special place in American fears, in part because the primary narrative taught about nuclear weapons is that we used them to end war. The secondary narrative taught about nuclear weapons is that The US and Russia have pointed enough fingers at each other to end the world forever, meaning that whenever tensions flare between the two states with the largest arsenals, it’s a short step to assume that nuclear oblivion is imminent. Kelsey Atherton, editor-in-chief of the Center for International Policy, told me.

“In a sense, Americans understand nuclear weapons as what ends major wars and forget everything else about them, and popular coverage (especially on television) is terrible at putting nuclear weapons in context,” he said it means that when something spectacular happens, like the use of an IRBM on Ukraine, it is filtered through the most sophisticated understanding of nuclear risk, combined with with an apocalyptic video.”

This will speed up. Putin will not go anywhere. China has no reason to slow down its nuclear ambitions, and President Trump and the GOP want more nuclear weapons, not less. up

We can try to understand it, we can lobby our bosses to stop, we can watch TV shows and movies that help us cope with anxiety.What we can’t do is ignore it.