So I read the actual publication[1], and it appears to be mostly a lot of conjecture, at best. The only actual risk assessment is in the appendix and matches th

So I read the actual publication[1], and it appears to be mostly a lot of conjecture, at best. The only actual risk assessment is in the appendix and matches the linked article. The 10% number cited by the article is the risk that this happens within 10 years using those numbers. However even the paper notes that the odds are time-invariant. This is quite unrealistic (which the paper fails to note) given that the geopolitical landscape has changed so much since the sample data used in the risk analysis. Instead we are asked to believe that US-Russian relations have not drastically changed since the sample data was taken. Indeed, "It also assumes that the ex- perience of the first 50 years of deterrence can be extended into the future." Given that the last sample point was 1984, this is, to put it mildly, ludicrous. It's more realistic to say that between 1945 and 1991 the risk of a Cuban Missile Crisis-type crisis causing a nuclear war was 6.5%33%10-50% per year, and since then it's been 0, than it is to say that (as of 2013) it's 3/(2013-1945)33%10-50% per year, let alone that it's .19-99% per year that the publication asserts. Similarly, the author laments reduced public interest in disarmament because the perceived risk has gone down, but has done nothing at all to show that the perceived risk does not correlate with actual risk! So what's the takeaway? It looks to me like the call for an in-depth risk analysis is warranted, but that the author is using sensational, cherry-picked, and unrealistic data to try to bolster support for it. [1] http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf