I rightly hope that everyone is scared shitless about the possibility of any war - let alone nuclear war.

But not so scared that a larger war results from unwillingness to fight a smaller war. We saw that movie in the 30s.

We've also seen how it has turned out in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Libya. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, for nothing. But as long as it's other people dying, we're totally fine with that.

Strawman. None of those involved genocidal maniacs (unless you include Cambodia, where the U.S. did not intervene) nor plain old tin pot dictators bent on world domination.

Fear can be a very useful thing to avoid something as catastrophic as nuclear war.

Fear causes people to not make rational decisions. It's not a solution.

Decision makers may not be fearful, but it may help if their electors are afraid and pressure them to solve the issue.

If the elected need to use deception to implement their goals...

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists exists primarily to encourage awareness.

The Doomsday Clock is perhaps imperfect, but it keeps the conversation going, something essential.

I want to live in a world where instantaneous human-caused planetary disasters cannot happen.

> I want to live in a world where instantaneous human-caused planetary disasters cannot happen.

That may very well stay in the past (until the first such disaster) - the whole point of technology is to have ever finer control over ever more powerful things. Two big subsets of that are ever-increasing energy demands (energy = destructive power), and self-replication (aka. biotechnology).

The other choice is to be equally effective, but with less explosive power. It's an effort to be environmentally friendly.