Nuclear Weapons

Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil meticulously charts one of the single largest causes of non-natural mortality.WWII is the quintessential transformational war, not only because of the sweeping changes it brought to the global order but also because of the decades-long shadows it cast over the rest of the…

PHOTO: GAVI/TONY NOEL (2018)There is an unprecedented race to develop a vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). With at least 44 vaccines in early-stage development, what outcome can we expect? Will the first vaccine to cross the finish line be the safest and most effective? Or will…

Written by Vivek Deshpande | Updated: March 26, 2020 12:07:01 pm Deserted Gateway of India in Mumbai, Maharashtra. (Express photo by Pradip Das)Every global crisis has its own philosophical import and an embedded message. We can ignore it only at our peril. In more recent history World War II ended…

Key point: Since no one else was going to act, Israel took matters into its own hands. It struck hard at where it thought Hussein was working on a nuclear weapon. In the late 1970s, it became clear to the international community that Iraq, under the despotic leadership of Saddam Hussein,…

So let’s focus on the real world. In the real world, we have to wash our hands. We need to pay anyone who’s sick to stay home. We have to figure out ASAP whether we should cross our fingers and hope private pharmaceutical companies develop a patented vaccine, or if it makes…

“Could something like this really happen?”  This was the question posed by President Ronald Reagan on June 8, 1983, to a room full of cabinet members and congressmen in the White House. As author Fred Kaplan explains in his book Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, Reagan had…

The concept of nuclear winter -- a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs -- has been around for decades. But such speculations have been based largely on back-of-the-envelope calculations involving a total war between Russia and the United States. Now, a new multinational study…

Average changes in maize yield in the five years following a nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Credit: Adapted from Jägermeyr et al., 2020 The concept of nuclear winter—a years-long planetary freeze brought on by airborne soot generated by nuclear bombs—has been around for decades. But such speculations have been…

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The treaty has three separate but inter-related objectives: preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapon technologies to more countries; promoting cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy;…

India tests its Agni-5 rocket in 2013, which is capable of carrying nuclear warheads.Credit: Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty It all starts in 2025, as tensions between India and Pakistan escalate over the contested region of Kashmir. When a terrorist attacks a site in India, that country sends tanks rolling across…