Amid the disastrous threats of climate change and the accelerating degradation of the earth’s spheres regulating our life conditions, e.g. atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and the cryosphere, the human madness, or rather the institutional madness of our modern societies, is extending its horizons to new unprecedented and unimaginable levels of total annihilation.

As by today the governance of our societies is threatening all forms of life on earth with various arguments that we need security and safety in the world. We as citizens need to address fundamental questions for our own security and safety not only for us but also for future generations: do wars, in particular nuclear ones, make us more secure and safe? In many situations in the past, and even now, evidence based reasons and accurate rationality to conduct wide-scale wars were/are absent and decisions were/are taken anyhow, e.g. Iraqi war. Decisions to make wars were taken under false arguments with no justification or even minimal efforts to seek diplomatic solutions. The threats of the nuclear weapons aren’t new at all and have been present even after the end of WWII. In 1953, in the Korean war and with the conflicts between e.g. the USA and China during the Presidency of D. D. Eisenhower (https://www.history.com/.amp/this-day-in-history/armistice-ends-the-korean-war) were the threats for nuclear wars were very alarming. The plans to kill over 100 million Chinese were even described as good plans.

We need to take in consideration that though the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), also called Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we still live under constant threats even from those who signed the NPT-treaty. The NPT-treaty was signed by the UK, USA, the Soviet Union and 59 other states in 1968 under which the three major signatories, which possessed nuclear weapons at that time, agreed not to assist other states in obtaining or producing them. The NPT became effective in March 1970 and extended indefinitely and without conditions in 1995 by a consensus vote of 174 countries at the UN. As of 2007 three countries (India, Israel and Pakistan) have refused to sign the treaty, and North Korea has signed and then withdrawn from the Treaty (https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-on-the-Non-proliferation-of-Nuclear-Weapons). The Non-Proliferation Treaty is uniquely unequal, as it obliges nonnuclear states to forgo development of nuclear weapons while allowing the established nuclear states not only to keep theirs but also to expand on their levels of threats and dimensions.

It is indeed, hard and even impossible to describe in moral terms how we can still afford to live under the threats of nuclear wars. Many people are still unaware of the consequences of nuclear wars. We as citizens live under constant and repeated threats that nuclear wars can take place anywhere and at anytime and indeed there many fingers around the world that can push the buttons of nuclear mass-destructive weapons. With advanced nuclear technologies, several countries have updated their nuclear arsenal (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons; https://www.statista.com/statistics/264435/number-of-nuclear-warheads-worldwide/) to unprecedented levels that can blow up all life for ever on the whole planet into ashes. A threat not only facing all of us but all other species as well including the whole biosphere. We aren’t properly informed about such threats and get incomplete information that either scale down the nuclear threats or informing us that we have protection and safety measures against them. Arguments are still used that nuclear wars are needed to provide security for nations without considerations to the security of us individuals that are even outside the conflict zones as the debris and radiation fallout from nuclear weapons have no boundaries even in the case of using the so-called tactical nuclear weapons for destruction of major cities, e.g. London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Moscow. Though there is enough firepower to obliterate life on earth and even if nuclear weapons aren’t used, modern life can be also destroyed by sophisticated conventional weaponry too including the piling up of refugees, homeless people and a wide-range of associated economic and food crises.

What can we as citizens do? We can do a lot, first we need to understand the dimensions of nuclear wars (https://youtu.be/2uv4HpQjTD4) and most importantly we can pursue joint pressures on world leaders to remove all together the constant threats of out-dated reasoning and thinking of such suicide-bombs (https://youtu.be/UJKQu8bmwPs).