How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate the Bomb

Allie Maloney January 30, 2025

I never pictured myself as a nuclear weapons policy analyst. Like other youth, the issues I am passionate about include climate change, healthcare, and gender equality. I always pictured myself fighting for the things I care about in my work. In my senior year of university, my professor assigned the reading “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” by Dr. Carol Cohn. Cohn explained how nuclear weapons, in all their horrific effects, are discussed so casually and with sexualized and gendered language by defense strategists. Even “small scale” nuclear use would kill millions of people, have massive climate implications, and sicken millions more in the radiological fallout. But many of the people in charge of policy making and the engineering of these weapons of mass destruction ignore these effects while discussing their potential use. Women and youth, who would face the brunt of physical and psychological impacts of nuclear weapons, are mostly excluded from discussions around nuclear weapons. After researching more about the effects of nuclear weapons use and testing, I realized all the issues I’ve always cared about are inextricably linked to nuclear weapons policy.

The threat of nuclear war is less visible today as it was in the Cold War, but it is still ever present. I never practiced drills crouching under my desk to hide from a Soviet nuclear attack. While the world’s nuclear stockpile has decreased greatly since the Cold War, the nuclear threat still looms large. The United States and other nuclear weapons states are all engaged in nuclear modernization programs—updating their current weapons with newer technologies—and spending trillions of dollars while they are at it. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock currently sits at 89 seconds to midnight, conveying the threat of nuclear war as nuclear-armed states nuclear saber rattle while entrenched in conflict.

A nuclear war cannot be won. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons: “The use of less than one percent of the nuclear weapons in the world could disrupt the global climate and threaten as many as two billion people with starvation in a nuclear famine in the long term.” This kind of catastrophic event could also lead to a breakdown of public services, including the healthcare system, as medical professionals themselves would be affected by fireblast and thermal radiation.

Since beginning research about the human effects of the potential use of nuclear weapons, I also learned about the impact of the production and testing of nuclear weapons on communities. Downwinders, or people who live downwind from nuclear weapons-related production plants and test sites, received doses of radioactive materials, leading to numerous health issues, including thyroid diseases, cancers, and reproductive issues. The effects of nuclear weapons are not just in a potential use scenario. They are actively killing today.

The anti-nuclear movement of the 80s was once thriving with advocacy campaigns and protests led by youth but is much less visible now. As we’ve seen by current youth-led campaigns such as March for Our Lives and the Sunrise Movement, we are extremely powerful in calling for policy changes that impact our own future. Nuclear weapons policy issues may seem too complicated to engage on, shrouded in clouds of secrecy and science, but there are ways for us to hold the nuclear industry and leaders accountable. 

You don’t have to have top secret security clearance to know about the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal. Through the Scoville fellowship, I have worked with the Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project. The NIP publishes information using open sources to estimate the numbers and types of weapons and how much the United States is spending on this arsenal. In FAS’s most recent U.S. Nuclear Notebook, they estimate that the United States has a total of 3,700 warheads in its stockpile and 1,770 deployed. These forces are extremely costly to maintain. Currently, the U.S. is undergoing modernization, upgrading all their bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that deliver these warheads. It is estimated that this effort will take 1.7 trillion dollars over the next decade, the same amount as total student loan debt in the United States. Not only does this great cost impact the national debt and government programs and services, it impacts our generation now and in the future. By prioritizing nuclear weapons funding now, our country may or may not have funding for needed programs and services for our generation and future generations. 

I see the research that I do in my fellowship as important to bringing awareness to the hazards that nuclear weapons present. I enjoy contributing to articles and even funny memes and videos that make this topic more accessible to my generation. While sometimes these existential threats seem untouchable, I have hope in other youth in this field as powerful changemakers. While I was a fellow with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Education and Research Center at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology over the summer, I met 25 young scholars from 16 different countries. I learned alongside students from countries like China, Russia, Ukraine, and South Korea, who contributed diverse perspectives but all understood the threat of nuclear weapons.

In March, I will join youth from all over the world to attend the third meeting of states parties for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in New York. I look forward to coordinating advocacy efforts and learning from the experiences of my peers in the field. I’m proud to be in a field that strives for a peaceful world absent of nuclear weapons.

Allie Maloney is a Fall 2024 Scoville Fellow with the Federation of American Scientists