There are fewer guardrails against nuclear annihilation than at any time in the past 50 years.

LONDON, Sept 27 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin has drawn a “red line” for the United States and its allies by signalling that Moscow will consider responding with nuclear weapons if they allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range Western missiles.

Everything is at stake. Everything is at stake with nuclear weapons.

The world is now closer to an actual nuclear conflagration than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

When Harris delivered her acceptance speech in Chicago, it did not include the words “atomic” or “nuclear” at all.

The candidates in the coming election in the United States have said little, certainly nothing coherently, about nuclear weapons. Yet those weapons continue to haunt us, even as they move in and out of our conscious awareness.

The Democrats’ 2024 party platform approved on the first night of the convention claims that the Biden administration “is showing what it means to act responsibly as a nuclear power.” But nuclear weapons were scarcely mentioned during the United Center speeches, if at all. Where were all the nukes?

NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe speaks to nuclear expert James Acton from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about the dangers of what is being called the new nuclear age.

Nuclear weapons offer an illusion of security. By allowing the U.S. nuclear posture to shift from deterrence to employment, there will be a scenario where the U.S. will use nuclear weapons. And then it’s lights out.

The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – a crucial barometer and guide in helping preserve the survival of the human race – has now been set at 90 seconds to Midnight since January 2023, the closest setting to Midnight – defined as the outbreak of thermonuclear war – it has ever been.