Nuclear war prevention and recovery
Decreasing the risk of nuclear war and increasing civilisational resilience
This profile is tailored towards students studying agricultural sciences, earth and environmental sciences, economics, history, political science and sociology, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
The use of nuclear weapons would cause direct suffering on a massive scale, potentially killing tens of millions of people. The indirect impacts – such as famine and increased societal fragility – could be even more catastrophic.
There are about 10,000 nuclear warheads in the world, held in nine countries and concentrated in Russia and the US. In addition to the two uses of nuclear weapons that have happened during warfare, there have been many times when nuclear weapons have come close to being inadvertently or deliberately used.
Estimates of the risks of nuclear conflict occurring in future and the amount of harm this would cause vary, but estimates are sufficiently concerning that further research exploring the magnitude of the risk, potential methods for prevention and ways to increase resilience in the event of nuclear war could be very important. In 2015, a poll of 50 international relations experts estimated a median 5% chance of a nuclear great power conflict killing at least 80 million people in the next 20 years, while a survey of academics at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference estimated a 1% chance of human extinction from nuclear war this century. See additional estimates in this report.
Nuclear war could leave societies more vulnerable to catastrophic risks such as pandemics, global totalitarianism, or worse values ending up in artificial intelligence, thereby indirectly contributing to existential risk.
It could potentially also lead to widespread damage to electrical infrastructure via nuclear electromagnetic pulses – bursts of electromagnetic radiation created by a nuclear explosion.
Nuclear weapons could also potentially cause a nuclear winter due to smoke and debris blocking out much of the sunlight and leading to a dramatic drop in temperature. Billions could starve as a consequence of the resulting impact of climate changes on agriculture. The likelihood of nuclear winter is still a subject of significant debate; see here for an overview of relevant papers. Further research might be valuable to inform how many resources should be allocated towards tackling this versus other existential threats.
Nuclear security is a major topic of interest for many governmental and nonprofit organisations, so this is a less neglected area than some of the other potential existential risks we have profiles on. However there are neglected areas of research where further work could be impactful.
For a longer introduction to this field, watch the video below from the Nuclear Threat Initiative which explores ways to build a safer nuclear future.
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Contributors: This profile was last updated 24/01/23. Thanks to Vaneesha Jain for first creating this profile and to David Denkenberger and Juan Garcia Martinez for helpful feedback. All errors remain our own. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
