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Schematics of the “Fat Man” bomb dropped over Nagasaki. Photo courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Eighty years and 89 seconds: It’s time to fight against midnight
By Alexandra Bell | December 10, 2025Share
There is an expectation that accompanies writing near and about anniversaries, and nuclear anniversaries are no exception to the rule. Other experts and I have followed the general anniversary format for years now, reviewing the history—of nuclear buildups and drawdowns, of ludicrous suppositions about nuclear weapons, and of near-fatal escapes from nuclear crises and miscalculations—and then carefully arranging earnest calls to action to reduce the nuclear threat.
Something about this anniversary feels different. Eight decades since the Trinity Test and the first use of atomic weapons in war, we now find ourselves at an inflection point. The rising tide of nuclear challenges threatens to overtop what remains of our poorly tended metaphorical levees. The choices in the months and years ahead will determine our fate. The future—our future—is on the line.
On page 1 of the first issue of the Bulletin, the newly formed Atomic Scientists of Chicago implored the public to see the danger at hand. They warned that “gain[s] in wealth, economic security, or improved health” would “be useless if our nation is to live in continuous dread of sudden annihilation.”
Perhaps unexpectedly, we did find a way to prosper under the ever-present shadow of nuclear war. And while the threat of sudden annihilation remains, the continuous dread is now largely relegated to the few of us who spend our lives contemplating and attempting to forestall doomsday. It would be hard to explain to Einstein, Oppenheimer, or virtually anyone alive in 1945 that the fearsome reality of a world awash in nuclear weapons would, in the future, often be nothing more than background noise. They would likely be stunned to know that the world has been lulled into nuclear apathy by its own success in avoiding annihilation, without much thought to the possibility that that success was underpinned by sheer dumb luck.
Of course, the truism that all luck eventually runs out does not resonate with everyone working to manage nuclear threats. Over the course of my career, I have heard some statements about nuclear threats that made my jaw drop. I recall a defense expert lamenting that “people think that nukes are worse than they are,” as if they aren’t the most comprehensive killing machine ever created by man. I still think about a former congressional staffer wearily quipping that “it is a fantasy and a waste of time to think that we can make progress” on arms control, as if we had the luxury to quit trying. I certainly cannot forget a colleague explaining that “we don’t want to seem desperate or plaintive about arms control,” as if an arms race didn’t come with its own foul scent of desperation. Resonating the loudest is the refrain from a counterpart confidently stating that “US-Russian arms control is dead forever,” as if either country could afford to ignore the nuclear threat they pose to each other.
These statements have counterpoints on the other end of the ideological spectrum that are just as troubling. I have marveled when an academic said that US allies have “nothing to fear from China,” as if Beijing’s rapid and opaque nuclear build-up was a benign undertaking. A disarmament advocate dismissed my concerns about effective verification by saying the International Atomic Energy Agency will “figure it out,” as if the IAEA had the necessary resources or legal mandate to determine, with certainty, whether all countries had rid themselves of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In defense of the Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons, I have heard one proponent say that they “never expected a nuclear weapon state to join”—which, if true, would make the treaty a time-wasting, dead-end pursuit. An activist once scolded me, saying the nuclear problem would be solved if the United States unilaterally disarmed, as if there was any empirical support for the contention that other nuclear-armed countries would simply follow along.
So here we collectively find ourselves in the 80th year of the nuclear age, with every nuclear challenge trending in the wrong direction and a discourse that is at best caustic and at worst separated from reality itself. With 89 seconds left on the Doomsday Clock, it is past time to ask ourselves some serious questions.
How did we get here?
Endless navel-gazing, cherry-picked historical anecdotes, and finger-pointing have long plagued the nuclear weapons debate, but at this juncture, a little reflection on how we got to this point is not only helpful, it is necessary.
Following the first nuclear test at Trinity, Manhattan Project scientists, including those who founded the Bulletin, began to raise alarms about the dangers of nuclear weapons and their proliferation. Those alarms went unheeded, and by 1949, the Soviets acquired their own nuclear capability. By the mid-1960’s, the Brits, the Chinese, and the French joined the nuclear club, and the world braced for the reality of dozens more nuclear armed states.
Sense (or the fear of nuclear annihilation aided by near-disasters like the Cuban Missile Crisis) eventually prevailed. Starting in 1970, through accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, most countries in the world agreed that we should seek another path. While the nuanced interpretations of what the NPT does and does not obligate countries to do could fill the UN General Assembly Hall, the general interpretation has the treaty essentially mandating three things: Countries with nuclear weapons (at the time China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) committed to good faith efforts to reduce their stockpiles with the eventual goal of general and complete disarmament. Countries without nuclear weapons committed to not pursuing them, and then all treaty members in good standing would have access to civil nuclear technology.
Though imperfect, the treaty prevented the mass proliferation once feared and kept pressure on countries with nuclear weapons—particularly the Soviet Union (and subsequently Russia) and the United States—to restrict or reduce their arsenals through a series of treaties and other legally binding agreements.
Throughout these years, public involvement was essential to progress. Millions of people marched in the streets around the world, demanding that their leaders work to reduce nuclear threats. Thousands of people then devoted their careers to meeting those demands.
The NPT’s indefinite extension in 1995, achieved through myriad further commitments to reducing nuclear threats, seemed like a full validation of the path away from nuclear weapons. Thirty years later, that consensus is now buried under rampant distrust and broken or unkept promises. Treaties were abandoned or violated, disarmament bodies became frustratingly deadlocked, models of stability were undermined, and the public turned its attention to other risks.
But nuclear threats do not manage themselves or diminish from lack of attention.
Many in the nuclear policy community now say we are at the start of a third nuclear age. The first age, running from July 1945 to roughly 1991, was marked by discovery, nuclear proliferation and build-ups, and the near-daily fear of nuclear war. The second age, running until now, was marked by massive arms reductions, two distinct proliferation challenges (from North Korea and Iran), and the fear of nuclear terrorism. This third age, some are quick to predict, will be marked by an arms build-up hastened by a burgeoning arms race driven by an oft-referenced and poorly defined “great power competition.” One could posit that it is a bit premature, if not cavalier, to predict how an entire age will unfold. That said, it is impossible to argue that the trajectory is unchanged, that nuclear threats are not on the rise.
What do we want now?
The exploration of the power of the atom may have rendered the creation of nuclear weapons inevitable, but no one actually asked the citizens of the world if they would like to create and sustain a security structure predicated on the complete and total annihilation of humankind. If they had been asked, it is likely that they would have preferred another option.
In fact, the majority of countries on this planet have now acceded to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a treaty that seeks to ban the use and possession of nuclear weapons. For almost all of those countries, the TPNW is the third iteration of that commitment to a nuclear weapon free world, the other two being the NPT and several regional nuclear weapons free zone treaties. Those commitments indicate widespread support for continuing the disarmament work of the last half-century.
However, the majority of humans on this planet live in a country that has nuclear weapons or is covered by a nuclear umbrella. In assessing their security needs, these countries all see the need for the deterrence that nuclear weapons in theory provide—and for some, even, the need for more nuclear weapons.
The keys to moving forward toward a safer world are knowing whether the latter group remains committed to the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons and if every country is willing to do the difficult work needed to reach that goal.
Those who do not think the end goal of a world without nuclear weapons is the right one for global security should make that case out loud, in public, and without euphemisms or what gender and security scholar Carol Cohn once described as “technostrategic” jargon.
Those who support disarmament but are not willing to take on the potential political or economic burdens that will likely accompany that pursuit should also be truthful about their level of commitment.
With overt and abject honesty, at least then those arguing over the future of nuclear weapons will understand the contours and nature of the debate and prepare accordingly.
Deciding the future
With all the cards on the table, reinvigorated discourse on the future of nonproliferation, arms control, deterrence, and disarmament would be a next logical step. Of course, current discourse on these issues is siloed or combative, so the task at hand will be to find a way to start talking with each other again—not at each other, past each other, or behind each other’s backs. Perspectives on nuclear risk vary widely depending on circumstance. Despite their current scarce supply, empathy and understanding will be needed from all sides if progress on reducing nuclear threats is to be made.
With a more rigorous conversation underway—one I hope to help platform here in the pages of the Bulletin—the process of finding common ground could begin. Given that a common long-term consensus about the future of nuclear weapons will take time and effort to forge, the short-term common goal should be the prevention of nuclear war.
Then one must ask, is the system of controls we have created to prevent nuclear war fit for purpose? Here, I think, you would find a point of agreement: No one who thinks very deeply about this situation thinks the current system is working well.
Nonproliferation
To start, nonproliferation has held, by and large, with only nine states in possession of nuclear arsenals, but the norm is fading with each day. In the past, countries considering the potential acquisition of nuclear weapons would do so in secret. Now experts and leaders in countries like Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, and even Japan openly discuss and debate going nuclear.
Going forward, countries must discuss the factors that are driving others to consider the nuclear option, work to mitigate or alter those factors, and work to strengthen the safeguards and structures that impede progress towards the bomb. Those safeguards and structures may be complex and expensive to maintain, but they serve a greater good. The likelihood of nuclear war goes up each time a new state builds a nuclear weapon. There are no exceptions to that reality, even as some bandy about the idea of “friendly proliferation” by US allies—among the truest examples of an oxymoron I’ve ever encountered.
New strains on embattled nonproliferation infrastructure may cause the nuclear threat landscape to further deteriorate. Many think that nuclear energy can be a bridge to a cleaner environment and a source for the huge electricity demands of artificial intelligence. That may well be the case, but as India, Pakistan, and North Korea have shown, a civil nuclear capacity can also be a nuclear weapons starter kit. To limit nuclear proliferation, a massive expansion of civil nuclear technology will require more resources and more support for the nonproliferation infrastructure, and a broad public conversation about the importance of investing in proliferation-resistant technologies.
Arms control
As efforts to restrain nuclear weapons proliferation continue, the set of tools that collectively make up the concept of arms control should be used to manage existing nuclear weapons. Arms control options include unilateral or parallel transparency and confidence-building measures, bilateral and multilateral dialogues, scientific exchanges and cooperation, political agreements, and, of course, legally binding treaties. These tools have been used to great effect over the past 80 years, bringing the numbers of nuclear weapons down from around 70,000 to the roughly 13,000 that remain today.
But countries need to acknowledge that not every tool is applicable for every circumstance, and that there is no such thing as a perfect arms control measure. After all, arms control measures are not intended to be permanent solutions; they are a way to buy time to ultimately change behavior to reduce the threat of nuclear war. Measures will weaken and erode if not properly tended, and sometimes changing circumstances will mean arms control measures no longer function as designed. But that is not an indication the tools lack value.
Some national security officials and advisers caution against “arms control for arms control’s sake,” but it is difficult to identify one instance in which anything of the sort has ever actually happened. Those who do not think an arms control measure is possible or necessary should be direct about their reasoning, saving everyone time and reducing friction.
For the short-term goal of preventing nuclear war, countries can pursue a variety of efforts, including increased transparency about and monitoring of nuclear arsenals, as well as enhanced arrangements for communications during crises. As part of that process, nuclear-armed states must engage in dialogues about their respective nuclear-deterrence postures and doctrines. Misunderstanding and misperceptions about intentions will only increase the chance of a nuclear catastrophe.
Deterrence
On the future of deterrence, effective policies will require a radically expanded debate that includes academic and political leaders. The scholarship around deterrence theory and practice has ossified over the years. Some who believe in the effectiveness of nuclear deterrence have drawn into a closed circle, portraying their views as representative of a broad public consensus and dismissing any critiques as naïve or uneducated. On the other side of the debate, some call for a wholesale rejection of deterrence, summarily dismissing any role it has played in maintaining stability and security in the nuclear age. As long as countries possess nuclear weapons, it would be useful to build a real consensus on how we manage stability and prevent nuclear use.
Such a consensus will likely require a return to the basics: What is deterrence? What it is for? What would it actually mean if deterrence fails? How will deterrence work with multiple adversaries, and in a three-way competition, how many missiles is ever enough? And with renewed US interest in homeland missile defenses, a scientifically-sound review of any potential new investments, as well as a refresher on the relationship between offensive and defensive weapons systems, would not only be timely; it is essential. In that vein, we must also explore whether deterrence policies are unduly influenced by a military-industrial complex that stands to gain financially from arms racing.
A real consensus on managing the nuclear threat must include the human factor. Do the autocratic leanings of many of the men who possess the power to start a nuclear war affect their likelihood to do so? Do we have a good idea of how these men would respond to pressure and potential escalation—will they act calmly and be guided by rational and scientifically sound advice, or will they be driven by paranoia and their desire for power? And most important, we need to truly debate whether any single individual should have the power to start a nuclear war.
There are other uncomfortable but central questions that have been avoided due to political sensitivities: Are China and the United States mutually vulnerable in terms of nuclear attack? Should North Korea still be treated like a proliferation problem now that it has an established nuclear arsenal and a growing set of delivery systems? Is the world even capable of moving away from a security structure based on mutually assured destruction? At the core of their deterrence discussions, countries will need to acknowledge that deterrence is not an end in itself but—as with arms control—a measure to buy time to change behavior. Arms control and deterrence are, in fact, mutually reinforcing. Both are necessary for global security, at least until there is consensus that we no longer need or want nuclear arsenals on this planet.
Disarmament
While working toward a broadened discussion of deterrence—again something I hope to see unfolding in the Bulletin—the world must also consider the future of disarmament efforts. This topic requires a more rigorous debate than now exists. Why did the post-Cold War push for a world without nuclear weapons fail? Was it lack of political will or urgency, resistance from those with vested interests in the status quo, or a disbelief in the idea that the goal was achievable? Is it possible to better frame the pursuit of nuclear disarmament—not as an unachievable fantasy, but as a legitimate security proposal? Is a world without nuclear weapons a safer world, or is it one where we have simply replaced nuclear weapons with different but equally dangerous weapons? How will global security be managed in a world without nuclear weapons, and what will disincentivize conventional war in the absence of nuclear deterrence? Can we ensure that upon reaching zero, the state of disarmament is irreversible? Some of these questions are being debated, but not by nearly enough people and from too few perspectives.
Many disarmament structures created with the best intent long ago ceased to function. Many of these structures—including the largely moribund Conference on Disarmament—were created through the three UN Special Sessions on Disarmament held from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Some observers have posited that after more than 30 years, it is time for another such session, to adapt and repurpose what was built. There is resistance to such an effort, with many experts postulating that there is no chance of improving conditions in the international discourse on nuclear threats, and a high likelihood of making things worse. At the same time, the fear of failure and the fear of losing what was built before could be our undoing. While it will take time—and likely inordinate amounts of patience—to build a new global consensus, the reality is that the only way to truly prevent nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons once and for all.
Of course, there is no short cut to a world without nuclear weapons, and no grand bargain on global nuclear disarmament in the offing. The academics, experts, and policy makers that will undertake the nonproliferation, arms control, deterrence, and disarmament work of this new nuclear age will face obstacles in many directions, and new and unprecedented challenges. They will need to understand how other existential risks—climate change and emerging disruptive technologies that include synthetic biology and artificial intelligence, among others—will affect their work, for good and for bad. They will need to push against status quo thinking, given that it is exactly that kind of thinking that created the current dangers. They must accept that progress will only be achieved through plodding, frustrating, and iterative steps underpinned by scientific endeavor and sustained political will, some of which can be easily controlled and some of which cannot.
The Clock is ticking…
Among the more important lessons to be learned from the last 80 years is a straightforward one: Nothing is certain, but nothing is preordained, either. Humankind is capable of its own destruction and its own salvation. None of the aforementioned questions will be easy to answer, nor would the suggested efforts be easy to implement. But difficulty is not an excuse for inaction.
Albert Einstein gave a speech in 1948 that was printed in the Bulletin. In it, he lamented that people were aware of the threat of nuclear war but “only a few act accordingly.” At the dawn of this new nuclear age, only a few are aware of the danger that surrounds them each and every day. That is why the Bulletin will continue to do what we’ve done for 80 years—platform a civil and scientifically sound debate on the ethical, military, political, and scientific aspects of global nuclear threats and their potential solutions. We will also make it clear that we have no time to spare, and that now is the time to act accordingly. Now is the time to fight against Midnight.
Together, we make the world safer.
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Keywords: 80th anniversary, arms control, deterrence, disarmament, nonproliferation, third nuclear age
Topics: Magazine, Nuclear Risk, Opinion, Personal Essay, Special Topics
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