It is my fervent belief... It is my strong opinion.... I sorta feel it should be the case that our media (print, broadcast, or web) be peppered with regular, distinct reminders of the existence of nuclear weapons. Nothing too fancy, just a simple statement of that fact, the potential dangers implicit in it, and a list of those countries with known arsenals. You know, like we put on cigarretes or alcohol, so people will be aware they are being put in danger for the sake of profit. Just a brief statement on the effects of such weapons, and the extent of the stockpiles in the United States, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea... I feel like I'm forgetting somebody. Oh well. But, then maybe some recommended reading or viewing to provide further context. Because as much as the things oughtn't exist, they do. Do they ever exist. More than 12,000 warheads between nine... sorry: eight, definitely eight countries. And that's just the inventory whose existence can be sussed out by the Federation of American Scientists. Mind you, this is a massive decrease from the 70,000-ish that existed in the late '80s, but nuclear weapons are the kind of thing where the numbers really stop mattering very much after a certain threshold. You can only render the planet's surface completely inhospitable to (most) living things so many times over. And while the maintenance of these things is always speoken of in terms of national actors - giving collective personhood of a single mind to millions of people - somebody's gotta make them, right? Somebody out there - several somebodies, more likely - has a factory where, at the very least, the many, many complicated bits involved in deploying a warhead are designed, manufactured, and distributed. Somebody is making money at selling nuclear weapons. So, there's manuals and stuff, right? Is there an annoying little warranty card in the box you get an ICBM guidance system in? Are there pamphlets? Because maybe you have a choice of guidance systems, and you want to know which one can most accurately center your multi-mile circles of devastation. So, is somebody hunched over a computer, arranging elements in Photoshop to best entice military dollars with a glossy trifold detailing the capacities of weapons of mass destruction? Well, just their guidance systems, right? But, does that person have a design degree? And this is madness, right? It oughtn't be. It needn't be, conveniently enough. Nuclear material has other uses, as it happens. So, why has this been deemed a worthwhile use of resources? Power a thousand homes; kill a million people. The calculus on this question has been done, and someone with a lot of money and influence decided on the latter thousands of times. The excuse given now is that, well, you've gotta have nukes, because other people have them, and they're all crazy foreigners, so they might use theirs. We need deterrence, of course. Maybe the existence of the atomic bomb was, in some ways, a foregone conclusion. Once we'd peered that far down into reality, in a world full of standing armies and defense contractors, somebody was bound to think to try it. But, the Manhattan project was famously secretive. A project for which a hierarchy of state secrets was created. Did anyone need to know? At that point, the American government could've probably kidnapped the Japanese Emperor, flown him to Nevada, rerun Trinity, and sent His Majesty home to draft a surrender. That was never the point, though, sadly. There is still nothing that makes the current situation necessary, though. Well, no. There is one thing. A politician might plead "jobs", and there are doubtlessly many well-paid positions in the megadeath industry. But that "well-paid" is even a concept at all is closer to the bone of the issue. If our hypothetical struggling art student didn't need to design marketing material for nuclear weapons, would we still have them? Probably fewer, surely. There was a great reduction, as I mentioned earlier. The Cold War had fizzled out, and those weapons that weren't dismantled seemed to be falling into serious disuse. I'm talking running-systems-tests-off-5ΒΌ"-floppies-in-2015-level of disuse. Which is a good thing! Obviously, we don't need them. Not important. So, just get rid of the rest. Seems simple. Alas, but no. Stockpiles grow. The global situation is tense, we are told, and you never know when you might need to level a city or two... thousand. And the jobs... the economy... they hate our freedoms... Have you stopped listening yet? The nuclear arms industry hopes you have. Though I've never been able to discover exactly why it was the case (whether some CRTC requirement or whatever), up until the last 5-ish years, whenever I heard Pink Floyd's "Mother" on the radio, the first line would be omitted. You know, the one that goes "Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?" Not only did this throw off the whole listening experience, right out of the gate, but it was also, I think, an injustice to the listener. If it's not a question that one dare ask, it at least merits asking, "Mother, why do you think they keep building the bomb?" Though, unless your mother is a legislator in a nuclear-armed nation, it is perhaps best to spare her the inquiry.