Since the invention of nuclear weapons, the human race and the world has been under threat by the nuclear sword of Damocles – as described by John F Kennedy
“Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.”
Despite many world leaders and campaigners expressing huge concern for the world and the ever-present threat of global annihilation, there are still huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons on the planet and it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.
During the Cold War, the two superpowers – the USSR in the East and the United States in the West often made it seem that nuclear war was frighteningly imminent – but how would a nuclear war play out today?
The United States and Russia have started to once again revert back to old Cold War tensions – with each side seemingly squaring up to each other on the world stage – Russia is increasing it’s nuclear stockpile with ever more advanced warheads, and the US President Donald Trump has sparked a lot of worldwide fears with his threatening Twitter activity directed at North Korea, as well as his increased military spending.
Even ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons would end affecting the whole world population. It is easy to envisage these situations getting out of hand with seemingly hot-tempered leaders at the helm – even nuclear weapons with a smaller yield that are currently being added to the US military stockpile would cause immense global devastation.
The problem is that once one country uses one nuclear weapon, it is a race for all of the others to also use their weapons defensively, causing a world ending nuclear exchange.
What the world really needs right now is positivity, a good motivational speaker and a decrease in nuclear weapons stockpiles – but it doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon.
