Why we should worry about nuclear weapons again

The Cold War prospect of global annihilation has faded from consciousness, but the warheads remain.

Excerpt: Over the past 30 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the prospect of nuclear war has faded from the American consciousness. With the end of the Cold War, films depicting the last days of humanity, such as 1959’s “On the Beach,” or the 1983 TV drama “The Day After,” largely disappeared from the Hollywood playbook. Schoolchildren no longer hid under their desks during practice drills to survive nuclear war.

But the weapons never went away. While thousands were scrapped and nuclear inventories were significantly reduced, many other weapons were put into storage and still thousands more remain deployed, ready for use.

Now, they and the dangers they pose are making a comeback.

The last nuclear age was defined by two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — poised to destroy one another in less than an hour. They both kept nuclear weapons locked and loaded to deter the other by threatening retaliation and certain destruction.

Today’s global nuclear landscape is far more complicated and, in many ways, more precarious. More countries and more advanced technologies are involved. Weapons can fly farther, faster, from more places. Information, accurate or false, can move even more quickly. Autocrats and extremists hold positions of power in nuclear-armed countries. Nuclear threats, once taboo, are now increasingly common.

And the last nuclear arms control treaty still in force between Russia and the United States expires in February.