2024 Was the Year We Learned to Fear Nuclear Weapons Again

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has lived with the threat of nuclear conflagration. The world’s nine nuclear powers have the power to end all life on Earth. In Russia and the United States, the power to launch world-ending weapons rests in the hands of a single man. This has been true for decades, but for a long time, the public was able to safely ignore the threat. Something has changed though, and people have learned to fear them again.

I’ve been covering nuclear weapons for a decade now, and I’ve seen it go from a niche curiosity to a major news beat over the past two years. In 2024 something has changed. The amount of nuclear stories and public interest in nuclear weapons has changed.

Every time Vladimir Putin makes a vague threat, a The cascade of stories Hit the newswire. Each report to Congress on progress Chinese nuclear arsenal now Gets national press coverage. three weeks ago, 60 minutes It brought together a bunch of its nuclear coverage from the past decade to reveal it A long video on YouTube. The New York Times made an incredible revelation last year Investigative journalism One of the year’s biggest TV shows about atoms is an adaptation of a video game A post-nuclear wasteland.

How do we get here? How did nuclear weapons go from a Cold War curiosity to a major public concern? These weapons have hung over our heads like the sword of Damocles all my life, but people have safely ignored them.

Matt Korda, who tracks nuclear weapons for the Federation of American Scientists, points to TV shows like F.alloutThe New York Times’ nuclear coverage and a prevailing perception of apocalypse in American life. “The mood at the moment is apocalyptic. Dumerism. The apocalypse is very much on people’s minds,” he said.

last year, Oppenheimer Tells the story of the birth of nuclear weapons. A few months later, Amazon was released Petni, A nihilistic and absurd journey through the California wasteland of a nuclear wreck. Both were huge hits.

Korda also pointed to the election, specifically when it was between Biden and Trump. “They were both very old. Both parties were champing at the bit to claim the other candidate was historically dangerous to the country. There were signs of obstruction on both sides,” he said.

“I have to think that it had a real impact on people that one of these two men would be in charge of a very destructive nuclear arsenal, and they both have serious problems with that,” Korda said. “The election has made people much more aware that the nuclear system we have in place is specifically designed to concentrate power in the hands of a single person.”

Biden was 82 years old when he left office. Trump will be 78 when he takes office and 82 when he steps down. Putin is now 72. Earlier this week, the New York Times published a study on the president’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. The Times asked all 530 incoming members of Congress how they felt about the president’s powers All life on Earth is over. The responses present an interesting cross-section of understanding an opinion.

Many were uncomfortable with the president launching a nuclear weapon as a first strike, but the president’s launch of a nuclear weapon in retaliation for the strike was fined. Democrats called Trump an anomaly. Republicans point to Biden’s waning powers. Some gave subtle and complex answers about resistance, growth, and sole authority. Many did not respond, and some answered yes or no, but those who answered in depth did so with consideration and thought.

It’s something they have in mind.

The nuclear threat was part of the first Trump administration, it’s true. But the nuclear conversation is now different and worse. “What was scary about the first Trump administration was the cavalier way that Mr. Trump made the nuclear threat, and mostly respects North Korea. So you know, the fire and the fury fallout of 2017 and then, of course, all the talks, which ultimately led to Kim Jong He failed throughout his presidency,” Sharon Squassoni, a congressional 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 continued drumming of nuclear threats as stoking fears. “For the first time we are up against a country that has made brazen threats to use nuclear weapons,” he said.

“The other thing that went with it was the collapse of all these arms control agreements,” Squasoni said. Over the decades, a series of arms control agreements between the United States and Russia ratcheted-down tensions. America was even helping Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union Dismantling its nuclear weapons and use nuclear material inside its nuclear power plant. That’s over.

During the first Trump administration, America withdrew from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The agreement bans certain types of nuclear weapons in both countries at intermediate ranges. A year later, the U.S pulled out Open Skies Treaty, which allows rival countries to openly monitor each other to prevent misunderstandings. In 2023, Russia withdrew from a treaty that banned nuclear weapons testing.

The only remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia is now the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). This Obama-era agreement limits the number of nuclear warheads both countries can deploy. It will expire in 2026 unless both parties agree to renew it. But for it to work, both sides would have to allow their rivals to inspect their nuclear weapons sites. Putin has already said he won’t let the deal go into effect and will likely die.

Add to that the fact that America, Russia and China are all building up their nuclear arsenals. China is digging holes in its desert to fill with new intercontinental ballistic missiles. America is modernizing its forces and is ready to spend billions of dollars on its own silos and ICBMs. Russia recently tested a new nuclear cruise missile Launch a new type Intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Ukraine in November.

“We are in a new nuclear arms race. It’s not just rhetoric,” Joseph Cirincione, a former congressional staffer turned anti-proliferation watchdog, told Gizmodo. “Nearly all of the nine nuclear-weapon states have multibillion-dollar programs underway. Most notably the United States, Russia and China.”

According to Cirincione, the United States is spending $70 billion a year on new nuclear weapons and an additional $30 billion on missile defense systems. That money has a real impact on the communities in which it is spent Nuclear weapons distort the reality of the places they exist.

To build its new Sentinel-class ICBM, the U.S. will need to dig huge new silos and build massive underground structures in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and North Dakota. Different parts of this project will touch 23 different states. Where they are building silos, contractors will Construction of temporary cities General Dynamics, a contractor working on new nuclear submarines, for the arrival of workers. Visit the school Teaching students about what it’s like to work in the nuclear industry and pitching them about building submarines in the future.

All this has an impact on public awareness. What was once an ancient weapon of a bygone age is back with a vengeance. It is not some abstract weapon of war, but an integral part of American society. It’s part of the post-World War II myth we tell ourselves and the thing, some say, that keeps us safe from bigger and more terrible wars.

“I think nuclear weapons hold a unique place in Americans’ fears, partly because the main story taught about nuclear weapons is that we used them to end a war. The second story taught about nuclear weapons is that the United States and Russia will end the world forever. For have pointed enough toward each other, it means that whenever tensions flare between two states with the largest arsenals, it’s a short way to assume nuclear oblivion is imminent.” Kelsey Atherton, Center for The editor-in-chief of International Policy told me.

“In a sense, Americans understand nukes as ending major wars and forget everything else about them, and popular coverage (especially on television) is terrible at putting nukes in context,” he said. “Which means that when something spectacular happens, like the use of IRBMs in Ukraine, it’s filtered through a shallow understanding of nuclear risk, linked to apocalyptic videos.”

This will accelerate. Putin is not going anywhere. China has no reason to slow its nuclear ambitions, and President Trump and the GOP want more nukes, not less. We are in a new nuclear age, where the old fear of total oblivion in nuclear hellfire is more possible than it was in the 1980s.

We can try to figure it out, we can lobby our leaders to stop, we can watch TV shows and movies that help us deal with our anxiety. Ignoring what we can’t do.