The existential threat of nuclear war: A psychoanalytic comment1

Abstract

AbstractUtilizing primarily the information and data compiled by both the editorial board of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as well as that of former nuclear war planner, Daniel Ellsberg, this paper discusses a number of heretofore classified or little publicly known dimensions of the nuclear war planning of the United States and other nuclear armed nation states, including policies of first use and command and control, the occurrence of false alarms and accidents, and the dynamics of nuclear detonation that would result in nuclear winter and worldwide famine. As such, the focus on these topics is an attempt to ameliorate both our shared ignorance regarding the once again growing threat of nuclear war, and its consequence—nuclear winter, as well as, the tendency of large groups to engage in collective denial in relation to thinking about the unthinkable, utilizing a definition from psychoanalysis of the defense mechanism of denial.