I see the 20th century as humanity playing Russian roulette (spin a revolver’s cylinder and pull the trigger) a few times and coming out ok, so I see the 21th century so far as a huge collective sigh of relief, “omg I didn’t even know we were in so much danger…!”, like when a tornado passes your house without you knowing.
You may examine the history and disagree with me, but if you contaminate your risk assessment with the fact that it turned out ok, that’s not cool, and you’re being deluded.
If you say “all’s well that ends well so carry on like we were, it’ll turn out ok again”, after surviving Russian roulette, you need help. (Not even talking about climate change or 6th extinction here.) Ok fine, enough with the sophomoric insights.
But I think this awareness of counterfactuals might make you: less quick to jump to conclusions, less sure you understand enough, more tolerant of ambiguity, more willing to accept added nuance—more likely to avoid playing Russian roulette again.
So while everyone’s in the streets, for these twenty, thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, celebrating “it’s not the end of the world! We hit three empty chambers in the game of nuclear roulette!”, I’m inside, watching some of us slowly picking up the revolver and eyeing it lovingly and thinking about spinning it again it freaks me the fuck out. We can deal with droughts, infections, small-scale fighting, even energy crises. But WMDs and nuclear codes and dictators… I’m freaked.
@22 I totally agree. I assume you've read the Chatham House report on nuclear near-misses (https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/papers/view/199200?dm_i=1TY5,2EIQH,BHZKW6,8Q9SA,1).
The world has been very lucky and that kind of luck does not last. That alone should be a sufficient argument for total nuclear disarmament.
Living in Glasgow, I am often reminded that the UK's nuclear weapons are there, less than 50 kilometers away, and thinking what I would do if something went wrong.