Fears about nuclear war are reaching a fever pitch. Another grim sign of the times | Judith Levine

IRumors of a third world war – the biggest, nuclear Armageddon – did not appear yesterday. But they became even more urgent when Donald Trump was elected for the second time. In December 2024, Newsweek published a map of “the safest U.S. states to live in during a nuclear war.” The article was not reassuring. “Nowhere is truly “safe” from consequences such as “contamination of food and water supplies and prolonged exposure to radiation,” said the senior policy director of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. Another expert noted that “even a ‘small’ nuclear war would kill at least a billion people.”

And since February 28, when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran, talk of a world war has multiplied, with everyone from anonymous social media users to Harvard policy enthusiasts participating.

Speaking this weekend to Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen, Columbia University economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs listed the many current or potential theaters of war, from Ukraine to Cuba. “We are probably in the early days of World War III,” Sachs concludes.

After it was reported that Russia was providing intelligence to Iran on U.S. military positions in the Middle East, CBS News asked British-American historian Niall Ferguson if a World War III was brewing. “I don’t think a third world war is likely,” he replied. But “it’s not a crazy question.”

China continues to increase its defense spending in an attempt to catch up with the United States. In response to Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine – and Trump’s ambitions over Greenland – Europe has become increasingly hawkish on nuclear issues. Last week, France and Britain sent “defensive” warships to the eastern Mediterranean; yesterday Macron said he would send 10 more. Australia has sent reconnaissance and command aircraft to help protect Gulf airspace. Axios named nine other countries that could soon get involved, including Russia and North Korea.

ABC reported Monday that Iran could activate “sleeper cells” around the world. A terrorist act within America’s borders could serve to legitimize an expanding war.

After militarizing immigration control in his country, Trump has just inaugurated the Shield of the Americas, which could transform the Latin American front of the global war on drugs from a police operation into something closer to a real combat zone. At a Florida summit preceding the first Shield meeting, he offered missiles to Latin American participants. “They are extremely accurate,” he says, apparently impressed by modern weapons. “Pyoom. Directly in the living room. This is the end of this cartel.

Trump has had a recurring history with nuclear weapons. In 2017, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced that his country was close to completing a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States, Trump moved nuclear aircraft carriers into Korean waters. As the tests continued, the game of chicken intensified, culminating in Trump’s declaration that if Kim did not back down, his country would suffer “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

The following year, Trump withdrew the United States from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal, calling it “horrible” and “unilateral,” and promised to negotiate a better one. He didn’t – which arguably led us to where we are today.

A year ago, the president considered restarting arms control negotiations with Russia and China. “There’s no reason for us to build entirely new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” he told reporters at the White House. “You could destroy the world 50 times, 100 times.” He was right. But last month he let New Start, the 2010 U.S.-Russia treaty capping strategic nuclear warhead stockpiles, expire.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the expiration a “serious moment.” With geopolitical tensions rising around the world and a lack of restrictions on U.S. and Russian arsenals, the risk of nuclear war is “at its highest level in decades,” he said.

“If it expires, it expires,” Trump told the New York Times. “We’ll make a better deal.” He didn’t do it.

And all of this was before the assault on Iran, perversely justified by the nuclear deal that Trump couldn’t or wouldn’t finalize — a war that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said would be fought “without stupid rules of engagement.”

The prospect of a third world war is both so unimaginable and so real that we seem to have moved directly from the first stage of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief, denial, to the last: acceptance. After considering the possibility of nuclear annihilation, popular discourse began to focus on its inevitability.

While the Washington Post advises its readers to “war-proof” their budgets in the face of rising gas prices, other media outlets are publishing service journalism about surviving the nuclear winter as if it were a major snowstorm.

“Amidst World War III ‘fears,’ how safe are PA and DE in the event of a nuclear attack?” » read a headline in Delaware Online on Saturday. The article answered questions such as “Is there a draft of World War III?” ” (no) and “Is Pennsylvania on the nuclear target list?” (Yes). It was linked to Under the Nuclear Cloud, a map prepared by scientists at Princeton University, based on computer simulations of nuclear fallout from a hypothetical all-out attack on the United States. The owner of the publication addressed the same topic for residents of New Jersey, a little further north of Washington DC. “Would New Jersey be safe in the event of nuclear war? See fallout map, ‘dangerous’ places.”

The bottom line: Although Washington is an obvious target for nuclear attack, readers would be wise to stay away from Montana, Wyoming or North Dakota, where the major silos are located.

Then there’s the human interest/business angle. On Sunday, the British Telegraph profiled a Texas manufacturer of nuclear-resistant “bunkers” whose business has been booming in recent weeks. A fundamentalist Christian, he views the metastasizing war as a sign of the End Times, which he awaits contentedly, serving his clientele, many of whom are also Christians eager for the coming rapture.

The tone of the piece is disturbing and light. The bunkers “range from large, sprawling underground complexes worth more than $5 million…down to small, pre-fabricated boltholes for those who want to escape the end of the world with a $20,000 budget alternative,” it says. “With an aesthetic combining a submarine and a Bond-villain lair, the shelters can be equipped with cinemas, swimming pools, an armory and a fully equipped shooting gallery inside.”

Also under the title Disaster Capitalism is the online prediction market Polymarket, which has brought in more than $800,000 in bets on the question “Nuclear detonation by…?” » Before public outcry forced the platform to crash the market, punters estimated odds at 22% by the end of the year. In a Reddit thread about the controversy, one participant asked: “If I bet on total annihilation and win, how will I collect?” »

Dark times call for dark humor. But there’s nothing funny about the most powerful person in the world making existential decisions because she seems unfazed, even titillated, by death and destruction. The denial of the worst is unacceptable. But so does acceptance. The last thing we should feel about Armageddon is closure.