People very much underestimate the risk of a nuclear war, because they are calculating the risk based on the situation today when that situation is naturally go

People very much underestimate the risk of a nuclear war, because they are calculating the risk based on the situation today when that situation is naturally going to change over time. Think about any long tailed event. The financial crisis. Fukushima. What are the chances that all the backup generators and safety systems are going to fail at the same time? Very small, if you just assume they’re independent and multiply together their failure rates. But a tsunami of sufficient size demonstrates that those failures rates are not in fact independent. Same thing with nuclear war. The chances of having a) a crisis of sufficient size to suggest the use of nukes b) two leaders who would actually push the button c) total diplomatic failure and so on would appear to be small. And it is- today. But what about in a situation where there is mass migration of people due to climate change, and the rise of authoritarian leaders in response, and war between major states? Now what’s the risk? Remember that in the Second World War, every weapon that was developed during the war was immediately used, including nuclear ones. Because it was a different context. If China invaded Taiwan tomorrow morning, the whole conversation would change in ways that seem unimaginable today. Think about how everything changed after 9/11. It was a totally different landscape. The only way to truly reduce the chances of nuclear war is to dismantle the nukes, and if their use seems unlikely now, that’s an indication that the time to dismantle them is now, when it’s relatively easy, not later, when it might be impossible.