nuclear weapons 
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SOURCE: National Security Archive
3/20/2023
Strangelove on the Square: Secret USAF Films Showed Airmen What to Expect if Nuclear War Broke Out
Air Force training films, with their bloodless procedural guidance for launching armageddon, provide a surreal insight into the Cold War that put Kubrick's absurdism to shame (yes, HNN will feature Dr. Strangelove-related content at any opportunity).
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
3/19/2023
We Miss Dr. Strangelove now that We've Learned to Stop Worrying and Forget the Bomb
by Andrew Bacevich
Kubrick's classic film forced viewers to confront the possibility that the controls of the world's nuclear weapons were held by fools, fanatics, and outright lunatics. Today, it's too easy to ignore it altogether.
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SOURCE: Substack
2/8/2023
Nuclear Fears Clouding Thinking on Ukraine
by Timothy Snyder
"Once we turn our attention to a hypothetical exchange of missiles, we get to imagine that we are the victims. Suddenly the actual war no longer seems to matter, since our lives (we imagine) are at risk. And the Ukrainians seem to be at fault."
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/25/2023
Canada's Hottest Tourist Attraction Could be the Government's Doomsday Bunker
Canada's Diefenbunker was decommissioned in 1994, and today is one of the few places where tourists can see the preparations made to preserve government in the event of the unthinkable.
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1/15/2023
Martin Sherwin's "Gambling with Armageddon" Strips away the Myths of Nuclear Deterrence
by Lawrence Wittner
As Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis . . . is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”
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SOURCE: NPR
12/17/2022
Energy Secretary: Revoking Oppenheimer Security Clearance Was Wrong
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated that the revocation of the physicist's clearance after his opposition to the US hydrogen bomb project was the result of a biased process, one historian Kai Bird calls a "kangaroo court."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
12/15/2022
Peace is Not Our Profession
by William J. Astore
The unveiling of the newest stealth bomber underscores the fundamental insanity and cruel wastefulness of the policy of peace through nuclear deterrence, argues a historian and retired USAF lieutenant colonel.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
12/12/2022
Resisting the Plans for America's "Nuclear Sponge"
by Taylor Rose
An unlikely coalition of conservative "sagebrush rebels" and Native tribal activists opposed a plan to locate the US ICBM arsenal in Utah and Nevada, creating a single nuclear sacrifice zone in the event of an attack.
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12/4/2022
What's New About Putin's Nuclear Threats? Just that the US is on the Receiving End
by David P. Barash
From the American perspective, the seeming danger of Putin's nuclear saber-rattling is partly due to the novelty of being on the receiving end.
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
11/17/2022
Putin's Invasion of Ukraine Won't Set Off a Nuclear Scramble
by Eric Brewer, Nicholas L. Miller, and Tristan Volpe
It seems that Russia's invasion of Ukraine may eventually help the cause of nuclear nonproliferation, if the United States approaches its allies with the right mix of defense assurances and aid to civilian nuclear power that may serve as a "hedge" to reassure other governments that they could develop weapons, even if they don't.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/7/2022
Putin's Nuclear Threats are Warping the West's Ukraine Strategy
by Anne Applebaum
Nuclear bluster is a purposeful strategy to leverage fear to make NATO nations less willing to defend Ukraine and other nations neighboring Russia. How can they have a better response?
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SOURCE: The Guardian
10/27/2022
Newly Translated Documents Give Fuller Picture of Nuclear Danger During Cuban Missile Crisis
The National Security Archive has released an English translation of the account of a Soviet submarine officer of events in October 1962 tells the story of how his vessel's commander nearly launched nuclear weapons against US Navy ships enforcing the quarantine of Cuba.
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SOURCE: National Interest
10/26/2022
Perspective: Using a Nuclear Weapon Would be Disastrous for Russia
by Steve Cimbala and Lawrence J. Korb
Russia has retained much of the Soviet-era's top-down command structure, which removes decisionmakers from both the real-world context and consequences of big decisions. This presents a danger that those leaders will misundersand the catastrophic result of a nuclear bomb.
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SOURCE: NPR
10/16/2022
Nuclear Fears 60 Years After the Cuban Crisis
From the actions of Soviet naval officers to the real-time recommendations of Robert F. Kennedy, the official story of the 1962 crisis is due for some updates according to historians who've published recent work on the subject.
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SOURCE: Associated Press
10/16/2022
Radioactive Pollution from WWII-Era Atomic Bomb Projects Contaminates St. Louis Elementary School
Waste from weapons production was dumped into streams near an airport and still contaminates a suburban elementary school.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
10/16/2022
A Decision to Declare an Already-Public History Secret is Bad for the Public
The State Department's official history of US-Soviet relations includes a military intelligence officer's recollection of a 1983 exercise that nearly triggered nuclear war. Why has the government pulled that official history and restricted the original memo?
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10/16/2022
Bye Bye, World: Will Humanity Continue to Tolerate the Risk of Nuclear War?
by Lawrence Wittner
Since the dawn of the nuclear age, broad-based disarmament movements have demanded a world without the threat of nuclear annihilation. Will the governments of powerful nations lead the way to realizing that goal?
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SOURCE: The Nation
A "Nuclear Posture Review" For the People Would Assess All the Harm of Nuclear Weapons
There are substantial harms involved in maintaining a nuclear arsenal that fall on the poor and people of color whether or not a nuclear warhead is ever detonated. The review of the United States' nuclear policy should incorporate these harms, say two advocates for arms reduction and abolition.
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
10/11/2022
Don't Forget about the Nuclear Danger over Taiwan
by Michael Klare
Ukraine isn't the only potential nuclear flashpoint. The United States and China need to begin negotiations to limit the risk around the conflict over Taiwan's status.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/5/2022
What the Cuban Missile Crisis Tells Us About Putin's Possible Intentions
by Michael Dobbs
The danger of nuclear brinksmanship is not that any one leader is irrational or intransigent, but that even rational leaders can't always control events they set in motion.