In a nuclear war, hundreds to thousands of detonations would occur within minutes of each other, resulting in tens to hundreds of millions of people dead or injured in a few days. But a few years after a nuclear war, global climatic changes caused by the many nuclear explosions c … | Continue reading
Computer vision expert James Elder explains why artificial intelligence is no match for human object perception. | Continue reading
By pushing back against Putin's threat of nuclear use in Ukraine, Western countries leave a risk of Russian miscalculation. But it's a risk they must take, argues a former US ambassador to Ukraine. | Continue reading
Nuclear electricity generation is not keeping pace with the growth of other energy sources, and the war in Ukraine has exposed the special vulnerabilities of nuclear reactors in wartime. | Continue reading
If global wind patterns change, it could upend agriculture, ecosystems, alternative energy production, weather patterns, and more. | Continue reading
Now that polio, which can permanently disable and even kill people, is back on the front pages, it’s worth asking what exactly is going on. | Continue reading
A typhoon was coming, the fuel pump failed, they had to switch planes, things were wired incorrectly, they missed their rendezvous, they couldn't see the primary target... Then the atomic bomb that was designed to end a war started to arm itself mid-flight. | Continue reading
The incentives to build solar power in a way that supports energy resilience, climate goals, the environment, and wildlife are not in place. | Continue reading
The Pentagon has consistently exaggerated its estimates of threats the United States faces. The clearest example of this strategy of exaggerated threat estimation is 20 years of failed “War on Terror,” but it continues today in massive military budgets aimed at preparing for "gre … | Continue reading
Brazil's new negotiations with the IAEA will complicate nuclear submarine safeguards—and possibly derail Australia's plans. | Continue reading
The speaker of the house of the state of Ohio and four other defendants were charged in July 2020 with racketeering in regard to a $1.5 billion bailout of nuclear power plants in return for $61 million in "dark money.” Ohio is not alone in its nuclear energy corruption. The same … | Continue reading
Billion-dollar seawalls often won’t be an affordable long-term answer to rising seas, and better alternatives exist. | Continue reading
A segment of the American population has long embraced conspiratorial thinking. False beliefs about moon landings or space aliens may seem as innocuous as they are outlandish. Yet, they may be close cousins to potentially far more damaging misperceptions that threaten to undermin … | Continue reading
Powerful figures in the scientific establishment want coronavirus genomes shared in the public domain, meaning anyone, anywhere could use the information without so much as crediting the people who generated the data. This could be a recipe for seeing contributions from less weal … | Continue reading
In this interview, renowned nuclear security and policy expert Sig Hecker explains the enormous damage that Russian President Vladimir Putin has done to the world nuclear order via his decision to invade Ukraine. That decision marks, Hecker contends, a turning point in world nucl … | Continue reading
If "Our Great National Parks" said any less about the crisis facing the world, it would verge on climate misinformation. | Continue reading
Russia's war on Ukraine has forced scientists to cancel fieldwork and suspend research projects, imperiling our understanding of climate crisis in the Arctic. | Continue reading
Good Food Institute founder Bruce Friedrich on how alternative meat could help solve big global problems like climate change and antibiotic resistance and what the nascent industry needs to succeed. | Continue reading
A top nuclear security expert explores a previously unthinkable scenario that might actually happen in Ukraine—the use of nuclear weapons. | Continue reading
Since 2000, Russian military doctrine has included the concept of de-escalation—the idea that, if Russia were faced with a large-scale conventional attack, it might respond with a limited nuclear strike aimed at forcing an opponent to retreat. Here's why. | Continue reading
Protocols of the Geneva Conventions, the rules of International Humanitarian Law, and Russia’s own military regulations prohibit the kinds of attacks that Russia made on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The question of who would hold Russia to account for violations of these … | Continue reading
A top nuclear security expert explores a previously unthinkable scenario that might actually happen in Ukraine—the use of nuclear weapons. | Continue reading
A US official worries that the conflict in Ukraine could lead to damage at laboratories holding dangerous pathogens. | Continue reading
Limiting methane emissions can play an important role in ambitious climate change mitigation, but only if getting to net-zero carbon dioxide remains the priority. | Continue reading
If an autonomous nuclear weapon concluded with 99 percent confidence a nuclear war is about to begin, should it fire? | Continue reading
The plan was simple: Give the psychedelic drug MDMA (popularly known Ecstasy) to Soviet scientists and military personnel set to negotiate with US President Ronald Reagan in 1985, thereby injecting empathy and cross-cultural understanding into the nuclear peace process. So, that’ … | Continue reading
A role-playing game about climate risk-reduction helps bring home the effects of investing—or not investing–money to prepare for climate change. | Continue reading
No longer able to outright deny the reality of climate change, the fossil fuel industry has pivoted to obfuscation. | Continue reading
A Bulletin/MIT analysis shows that almost 4,900 sites that handle toxic chemicals sit in flood-prone areas of Texas and Louisiana, posing a catastrophic environmental threat if a major hurricane hits the wrong place. The government's current plan to protect Gulf Coast infrastruct … | Continue reading
As drones become cheaper and more capable tools for terrorists, the risks they pose to critical infrastructure is growing. Has the US government thought enough about how to defend the electric grid and other important infrastructure from attack? | Continue reading
Recent revelations about risky viral bioengineering work in Wuhan, China, underscore the degree to which gain-of-function research in the name of predicting pandemics is an idea that doesn’t seem to fade. | Continue reading
Whether environmentalists like it or not, direct air capture might be a necessary technology to solve the climate crisis puzzle. | Continue reading
Northwestern University researcher Josiah Hester is developing an array sustainable alternative power sources that could replace batteries—and eliminate or reduce the many negative environmental impacts of battery use. Hester’s field is called “intermittent computing,” and he bui … | Continue reading
The secret history of the world’s largest nuclear detonation is coming to light after 60 years. The United States dismissed the gigantic Tsar Bomba as a stunt, but behind the scenes was working to build a “superbomb” of its own. | Continue reading
Scotland’s only working nuclear power plant at Torness shut down in an emergency procedure this week when jellyfish clogged the sea water-cooling intake pipes at the plant. To protect marine life and avert nuclear disasters, scientists are investigating the use of drones to provi … | Continue reading
Russia is seeing record levels of COVID-19 cases and deaths amid a fourth wave of COVID-19. Despite the toll of the pandemic, Russians tell pollsters they're not afraid of COVID-19 and don't want to get vaccinated against it. Deep skepticism of the state has led people to tune ou … | Continue reading
The ill-fated construction of new nuclear reactors in South Carolina—one of two such troubled Westinghouse reactor construction projects in the United States—was abruptly terminated in 2017, but the effort to determine legal accountability for the project’s colossal failure is on … | Continue reading
Circumstantial evidence is piling up on how the pandemic began. On one side of the debate over whether COVID-19 has a natural origin or whether it could have spawned from a laboratory accident, researchers point to evidence such as discoveries of viruses in nature that are very s … | Continue reading
Graphic novels are now a billion dollar industry in the United States. There’s certainly an audience for new visual books, including non-fiction. But is there one for government public service messages? | Continue reading
This summer, two nongovernmental organizations—our own included—disclosed construction of what appears to be hundreds of new missile silos in central China. How many silos? Why is China building so many? What does it mean for Chinese nuclear policy? And what to do about it? | Continue reading
A team of Ukrainian graphic designers has created an ever-changing image that captures the evolving aftermath of nuclear disaster. | Continue reading
The origins of the Covid-19 pandemic remain obscure. The reasons include a vigorous campaign of concealment by the Chinese authorities and missteps by senior medical research officials in the United Kingdom and United States who mishandled the initial inquiry into the virus’s ori … | Continue reading
The fossil fuel industry lied about carbon dioxide and its effects on climate change. But is “crime” the right adjective to use to describe the activities of Big Oil? One climate scientist’s thoughts. | Continue reading
The Bulletin is proud to announce Nathan Doyle as the winner of its Doomsday Clock T-shirt design contest hosted by Threadless.com. “Time is Running Out” was chosen from 353 international submissions. Prints and T-shirts of his design can be purchased from the Bulletin’s Threadle … | Continue reading
J. Robert Oppenheimer led the Manhattan Project—the research and development program that produced the bomb—but later voiced strong opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb and argued for international controls on nuclear weapons. His advocacy created political adversar … | Continue reading
Amidst the destruction of the first atomic bomb test, mathematically perfect quasicrystals—a “forbidden” kind of matter whose existence had long been contested—rained down in the debris. Atomic bomb quasicrystals hold promise as an analytical tool for determining who was responsi … | Continue reading