Nuclear war never stopped being a possibility, but it became much less likely in the 90s with the end of Cold War and the USSR. I don't think it ever disappeared from public consciousness, it just fell down on the list of worries. Nowadays, with the US/China stories, I personally am getting worried about it again - but still less than about the climate.

Pakistan/India probably is the greater threat and whatever ensues after that.

In overall numbers, nuclear stockpiles have shrunk significantly since the peak in the Cold War. In spite of rhetoric, they have not grown significantly in recent years, either. The long-term trend in number of deployed nuclear weapons is downward and (if efforts continue) will likely remain so.

Stockpiles peaked at the end of the Cold War in mid-late 1980s with over 60,000 warheads. 40,000 when these children were being filmed. About 10,000 today and falling (although falling slower than it should). https://ourworldindata.org/exports/number-of-nuclear-warhead...

Hum. As always, things are relative. Growing up in the 1970s and early '80s I gave myself zero chance of ever reaching 30 (or even 25). Near miss scenarios were just too frequent. (E.g., compare the "Able Archer" crisis of 1983. The GDR had actually mid-range nuclear strike bombers on the runway with turbines running, ready to retaliate, and the USSR had forces moved into mobilization zones, ready for the worst.) Compared to this, things have become much better. However, the idea of the potential for any nuclear crisis scenarios being "solved" is as accurate as, say, the current idea of natural language recognition being "solved".

> But the reality is that it was only avoided for a while, and will never be solved so long as nuclear stockpiles are maintained.

That doesn't solve anything either, countries could just start building nuclear weapons "in secret" at any time. What are you going to do about it? You can have sanctions, but those didn't stop NK or Iran.

Let's say that nuclear weapons didn't exist, what about biological and chemical weapons? What about endless trench warfare?

The real problem is war, not the means to it. It's conceivable that nuclear weapons prevented many wars, in a "high risk, high reward" type of situation.

> Our present moment is more dangerous than any point in history

Rubbish. We have fewer missiles, and the world is no longer engaging in proxy wars to achieve Soviet or US influence whilst those two are nose to nose in hostile and absurd posturing. There are no longer two or three Nato-Soviet incidents a week. There are no longer weekly scrambles of aircraft to intercept the bomber or spy plane.

The little local difficulty between India and Pakistan doesn't really compare. The decline of Western military spending and sale of former government nuclear bunkers rather gives that away.

The Russians seem to have solved their Cold War problem by buying influence inside the US and UK - which was much cheaper than all-out nuclear destruction.

But they've also been upgrading their civil defence systems and nuclear stock while Nato has been distracted.

IMO the current situation in Europe is very much still a proxy war, but it's a proxy war promoting hard-right regime change within the member countries of the EU and the US rather than a proxy shooting war in another continent.

That's progress of a sort, and it definitely shows signs of more intelligent strategic thinking than the USSR managed. But it's still a political war against the EU's liberal democracies, and a culture war against liberalism in general.

You're right there - it's a proxy war in the sense the old Anglo-Russia Great Game was. Though that style of strategic thinking goes long back in Tsarist Russian history.

I must be missing some serious nuclear brinkmanship going on somewhere. Russia is kind of stirring up trouble, but mainly in a desperate attempt to even get noticed. The tensions between India and Pakistan don’t really seem to have an imminent nuclear dimension.