Since the end of the Cold War, the world has lived with the threat of nuclear fire.
The worlds nine nuclear powers have the ability to end all life on Earth.
Somethings changed though, and people have learned to fear them once again.
15-megaton Castle Bravo explosion at Bikini Atoll, March 1, 1954, showing multiple condensation rings and several ice caps.© U.S. Department of Energy photo.
Something shifted in 2024.
The amount of nuclear stories and the public interest in nuclear weapons has changed.
Every time Vladimir Putin makes a vague threat, acascade of storieshits the newswires.
Every report to Congress about advances in theChinese nuclear arsenalnowgets national press coverage.
The New York Times has spent the last year publishing incredibleinvestigative journalismabout nukes.
How did we get here?
How did nuclear weapons move from a Cold War curiosity to a major public concern?
The mood right now is apocalypse.
Apocalypse is very much on peoples minds, he said.
Last year,Oppenheimertold the story of the birth of nuclear weapons.
A few months later, Amazon releasedFallout,a nihilistic and absurd journey through a nuclear-ravage California wasteland.
Both were enormous hits.
Korda also pointed to the election, especially 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 for the country.
There were signs of impairment on both sides, he said.
As Biden leaves office, hes 82 years old.
Trump will be 78 as he takes office and 82 when he leaves it.
Putin is 72 right now.
The responses represent an interesting cross-section of understanding an opinion.
Democrats called out Trump as erratic.
Republicans pointed to Bidens diminished capacities.
Some gave nuanced and complicated answers about deterrence, escalation, and sole authority.
Its something thats on their mind.
Nuclear threats were part of the first Trump administration, its true.
But the conversation around nukes is different now, and worse.
For decades, a series of arms control treaties between the U.S. and Russia ratcheted-down tensions.
During the first Trump administration, America pulled out of the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
The treaty stopped both nations specific kinds of nukes with an intermediate range.
In 2023, Russia withdrew from a treaty that banned the testing of nuclear weapons.
This Obama-era agreement limits the amount of nuclear warheads both countries can deploy.
Itll expire in 2026 unless both sides agree to renew it.
But enforcing it requires both sides to allow their rivals to inspect nuclear weapons sites.
Putin has already said he wont allow the treaty to be enforced and itll likely die.
Add to this 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 set to spend billions of dollars on its own silos and ICBMs.
Were in a new nuclear arms race.
There are multi-billion dollar programs underway in almost all of the nine nuclear-armed nations.
Most prominently in the United States, Russia, and China.
That money has a tangible effect on the communities where its spent.
Nuclear weapons warp the reality of the places where they exist.
Various parts of this project will touch 23 different states.
In the places where theyre building silos, contractors willbuild temporary citiesto house an influx of workers.
All of this has an effect on the public consciousness.
What was once an ancient weapon of a bygone era is back with a vengeance.
It is not some abstract weapon of war, but an integral piece of American society.
Putin isnt going anywhere.
What we cant do is ignore it.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
