Nuclear Weapons in 2122: Disaster, Stability, or Disarmament?

Writing from a Swiss Alps monastery, we reconstruct how our world was turned into a radioactive ruin and consider whether some alternative was possible that might have avoided the nuclear war that devastated our planet. Drawing on the twentieth and twenty-first century scholarship on nuclear weapons, and the idea known as the “multiverse, " we seek to explain why the nuclear war happened and ask what other outcomes were possible. We present three scenarios that are based on different combinations of technological and political developments that would have been feasible starting from 100 years ago. Scenario A corresponds to the current situation and outlines the origins of the nuclear war that largely destroyed human civilization. Scenario B presents an alternative that might have resulted in stability despite a modest expansion in the number of states with nuclear weapons. Scenario C discusses a path that might have led to the abolition of nuclear weapons. In each scenario, we use theoretically informed lenses to explain the conditions and triggering events that could have led to these alternative earth histories.