本周我们讨论的话题是核末日。但现在为什么要担心核末日呢?冷战结束了。在它的巅峰时期，我们有3万枚弹头指向苏联，他们有4万枚弹头指向我们——但我们每个人都只剩下这个数字的一小部分。气候末日似乎更有可能发生。

一方面，每个军火库中仍有足够的核武器将地球烧成灰烬，造成核冬天，并几乎消灭地球上所有的生命。但是，为什么不感到欣慰的是，只有一个国家在战争中使用过核武器——那是70多年前的事了?

Because that’s one country… so far. But more countries are getting into the nuclear act all the time, like India and Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Some terrorist with a dirty bomb may be next. It’s hard not to think that the more players there are with nukes, the more likely they are to be used again.

Of course, when the United States dropped the A-bomb on Japan, we had a nuclear monopoly. Since we lost that monopoly, not a single nuclear weapon has been unleashed—which is not to say we haven’t come close. People of a certain age will certainly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, and President Kennedy going on national TV urging Americans to start building fallout shelters.

So how could anyone be sanguine about nuclear proliferation? Obviously in a perfect world, no nation would have nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. As long as the US, Russia, China, and others insist on having huge nuclear arsenals, you can’t expect other countries not to pursue them.

So is that a recipe for disaster, or just a recipe for a nuclear standoff? If nation A has nuclear weapons and nation B doesn’t, nation A can push nation B around. But if both nations have them, they don’t mess with each other. Sure, complete disarmament would be better. But a standoff beats both nuclear war and nuclear domination.

Of course, that argument can sound like a nuclear version of the NRA’s bogus argument that we’re all safer if guns are everywhere. More weapons means more chances for accidents or strategic miscalculations or chest thumping brinkmanship. If we want nuclear safety, we’ve got to break the nuclear wheel.

But how precisely do we do that? We can’t expect many nations to unilaterally disarm. We can’t even expect the U.S. and Russia to agree to MUTUAL disarmament, not with China waiting in the wings to become the world’s dominant nuclear power.

但也有可能认为核武器基本上是无用的。毕竟，核武器并没有拯救苏联在阿富汗的失败，也没有阻止苏联帝国的崩溃。他们没能阻止美国在伊拉克或越南的溃败，也没能阻止双子塔的倒塌。他们当然帮助以色列解决了巴勒斯坦问题。

这就好像核武器就像上膛上膛的枪一样有用——当然，如果你真的要发射它们，那你就失败了。Plus the next time someone fires them, it will almost certainly be the last time they or anyone else gets to use them. That’s a pretty limited form of utility.