Nuclear war is a far greater immediate threat to humanity's survival than climate change, but why is no one talking about it?

A blip comes onto radar screens, followed by another. False alarm? System malfunction? Or is a massive missile about to hit? With America's 'launch on warning' policy, the US president has as little as six minutes to decide whether to mount a nuclear response. The world teeters constantly...

Nuclear war is a far greater immediate threat to humanity's survival than climate change, but why is no one talking about it?

A blip comes onto radar screens, followed by another. False alarm? System malfunction? Or is a massive missile about to hit? With America's 'launch on warning' policy, the US president has as little as six minutes to decide whether to mount a nuclear response. The world teeters constantly on the brink of nuclear annihilation - and yet nobody is even talking about it.

There are no marches, no COPs, no nuclear Greta, but nuclear war is a greater immediate threat to humanity's survival than climate change. A full nuclear exchange would literally mean the end of civilisation, destroying in a week what has taken millennia to build. In the post-nuclear global darkness there would be no photosynthesis. The biosphere would be wiped out in a mass extinction rivalled only by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Temperatures would fall below freezing for months on end. Virtually the entire global human population would starve, and there would be no reliable refuge.

Ignoring the issue is no more of a solution to the nuclear threat than it was to the climate one. Six Minutes to Winter outlines the horror but also proposes a solution - the building of an international political movement fighting for the total global abolition of these terrible weapons. And the time to start is now.