Everywhere you look these days, you see the trope: the “end of the world” is nigh from a nuclear war. You see it in somber headlines, in weighty punditry, even in throwaway jokes in the middle of, say, a TV review: “Looks like the BBC finally has a comedy hit — just as the world is about to blow up!” Ha ha. The current situation with North Korea is being portrayed as if it’s a reboot of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with two massively armed superpowers on the brink of all-out global conflagration. More

The West is engulfed in flames. A 14-square-mile fire in Glacier National Park has destroyed a historic backcountry lodge and towns from Boise, Idaho to Missoula, Montana are covered in smoke from nearby fires. Residents are cautioned to stay indoors due to unhealthy air quality. Down in Yosemite, a 15-square-mile wildfire is burning around a grove of 2,700 year old sequoias. Up in Washington a fire is blazing near Mount Rainier National Park, which grew to more than 29-square-miles over the weekend. Ash is falling in Seattle for the first time since the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. More

The US and North Korea are on the brink of hostilities that if begun would almost certainly lead to a nuclear exchange.  This is the expressed judgment of most competent observers.  They differ over the causes of this confrontation and over the size, range and impact of the weapons that would be fired, but no one can doubt that even a “limited” nuclear exchange would have horrifying effects throughout much of the world including North America.

So how did we get to this point, what are we now doing and what could be done to avoid what would almost certainly be the disastrous consequences of even a “limited” nuclear war? More