In 1946 the US began its nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands – 75 years later, the fallout continues to wreak havoc. Nuclear weapons present the world with several deadly paradoxes. The most destructive military instruments yet devised, which have remained unused for decades despite the constant warfare since their debut in Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly 70 years ago. Nevertheless, unused in battle and often declared to be unusable, they dominate strategic thought and ensure that military questions preoccupy the nuclear powers more persistently than ever before in peacetime.

All the world’s nuclear powers are rehearsing nuclear chess by trading nuclear insults. The shadow of nuclear Armageddon looms over their fragile lines of control.

Ever since Japan was nuclear-incinerated world leaders have had the wisdom to avoid another nuclear war. Humanity witnessed the terrifying destructive power of nuclear weapons and vowed never to repeat the mistake. There is a frightening real risk that mankind has not witnessed its last nuclear war. We live in the shadows of a new and deadly war. Many sober observers believe the world is closer to nuclear war now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is the equivalent to nuclear roulette, a version of political roulette in which the entire world is at stake, with a two- or three-chambered revolver. Every small conflict pulls the trigger in nuclear roulette. In the metaphor of nuclear roulette, every day we pull the trigger of the many-chambered nuclear gun pointed at the head of civilisation.

Brinkmanship between the nuclear antagonists is a shared risk of war in which each side pushes the other closer to the brink of disaster or war in order to force the other side to capitulate at the last second. No nation on Earth will survive a strategic nuclear exchange. The only way to survive nuclear roulette is to put down the atomic gun. The current constellation of global events make nuclear war virtually inevitable. In the aftermath of a massive nuclear exchange the living will envy the dead. Hundreds of computer nuclear simulations reveal that every major city on the globe will be incinerated. Dense poisonous, radioactive debris will encircle the whole of Asia, southern Russia, the entire Middle East and major parts of Europe. 

Admirals and generals in nuclear countries falsely believe they will emerge victorious in a nuclear conflict. This deadly myth is embedded in their respective nuclear doctrines. Their first- and second-strike capabilities are fatally flawed – they will not survive the nuclear holocaust that will follow. Once nuclear war is unleashed there will be no turning back.

The electromagnetic pulse produced by the nuclear fireballs will destroy communications on a scale that mankind has never witnessed. Our civilisation will come to an abrupt end. 

All nuclear powers must stop playing nuclear chess and atomic roulette. DM