In April this year, a report from the House of Lords’ International Relations Committee said that “the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater now than it has been since the Cold War.” The report cited “disintegrating relationships between nuclear possessor states, new capabilities and technologies” as the reason behind the escalated tensions, and one expert now believes it is the biggest risk humanity faces. Bryan Walsh, author of the existential risk book End Times, believes the threat of nuclear war far outweighs any natural disaster, such as a supervolcano eruption or an asteroid strike.
Mr Walsh agrees with the sentiment from the House of Lords’ International Relations Committee report, and said that the threat of nuclear war is back after a few decades.
Mr Walsh wrote in his book: “While supervolcanoes are the most dangerous natural existential risk, nuclear weapons, I believe, remain the single most significant existential risk we face right now, today, man-made or otherwise.
“Not asteroids, not disease, not artificial intelligence, but the old nuclear nightmare.
“There is no defence against them should they be used. They are weapons of war but primarily murder civilians.
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“They have the capacity to ruin the entire planet, even end our species.
“And after years of hopeful progress, we now somehow find ourselves in a moment of renewed peril.”
However, Mr Walsh does offer a glimmer of hope and believes the fate of nuclear war is in our own hands.
He continued: “For just as the ability to end this world with nuclear weapons is in our power, so is the ability to save ourselves.”
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“These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilisation in extraordinary danger.
“There is nothing normal about the complex and frightening reality just described.”