Nuclear weapons are terrible — but it's foolish to ban the bomb
And then we all became crisps, and most of the world a vacant desert, unless one chanced to live in Argentina or Uruguay, which might be spared. 'Over time, almost no one will survive,' Mark Lynas writes in his revisit to the Dr Strangelove nuclear doomsday scenario. 'What is surprising … is how little anyone seems to care.'
He means that, in a world insanely overburdened with nuclear weapons capable of extinguishing humankind, it is extraordinary that we seem so little moved by the prospect. In the 1950s we read novels such as Nevil Shute's On the Beach, which chronicled the last gasp of civilisation, implausibly set in Australia. And we trembled under our blankets.
Today, however, we accord the nuclear threats of Vladimir
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