Two Futures Project

10. “Considering the Effects of a Catastrophic Terrorist Attack” (Technical Report)

What would happen if a 10 kiloton nuclear bomb exploded in a shipping container in the Port of Long Beach? The RAND Corporation did the math in order to predict exactly what would happen. This is an extremely conservative report in terms of damage prediction—the disaster could be far worse. For other excellent sources, see the Federation of American Scientists interactive blast maps; Dr. Graham Allison’s website, Nuclear Terrorism: the Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe; or this less-scientific but interesting Google Maps mashup.

9. “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” and “Toward a Nuclear-Free World” (Op-eds)

In 2007, a nonpartisan group of four senior statesman–George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn–issued an urgent plea for nuclear disarmament in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. They were joined by a super majority of top national security experts. In 2008, they followed their original appeal with another op-ed and founded The Nuclear Security Project as a home for their continued efforts.

8. ArmsControlWonk.com (Blog)

You know you’re a nerd when you take a break from writing books, articles, and reports about nuclear weapons to maintain a lively (and wonky) personal blog about . . . nuclear weapons. Respected researcher Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is Mr. Arms Control Wonk himself, the nation’s leading blogger on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. Lewis’ liberal politics occasionally slip through long posts about vacuum tubes and warheads, but we still think it’s worth a read.

7. Stockpile Statistics (Website)

Curious about how many nuclear weapons the U.S. currently has? What about Russia’s stockpile? Wondering how fast the number of warheads has increased since 1945? The National Resources Defense Council maintains a detailed accounting of all the numbers you could ever need in its Archive of Nuclear Data. The Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project is also exceptionally helpful.

6. When the Bombs Dropped (Film)

The HBO documentary White Light, Black Rain is a devastating portrait of the human cost of nuclear weapons. 210,000 people died when the United States used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and this award-winning documentary highlights the voices of those who lived to tell the story.

5. Iran and North Korea’s Nuclear Programs (Website)

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan organization seeking to reduce the global threat posed by chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, regularly updates its country profiles, where you can investigate each nation’s nuclear status and history.

4. President Obama’s Palm Sunday Mandate (YouTube Video and Transcript)

On April 5, 2009, President Obama issued a ground-breaking call for nuclear disarmament from Prague. A Christian response from 2FP director Tyler Wigg Stevenson appeared on the online RELEVANT magazine shortly afterwards.

3. Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons by Paul Lettow (Book)

Most people don’t realize that Ronald Reagan had an abiding commitment to nuclear abolition–but even fewer know why that commitment stemmed from a summer job as a lifeguard. Lettow’s heavily researched analysis illuminates much of Reagan’s presidency, such as the time that Reagan and Gorbachev came t-h-i-s close to pledging the utter elimination of their nuclear weapons during the 1986 Reykjavik Summit.

2. The ABCs of the NPT: The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Web-based Tutorial) 

Over the years the NPT has succeeded in greatly reducing the spread of nuclear weapons. Learn the ins and outs of the NPT with this user-friendly, step-by-step tutorial, courtesy of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Other NTI resources here, as well as the Nuclear Security Project, their effort to promote the work started by the now-famous Wall Street Journal op-eds (see our #9, above).

1. Afterwinds, Midgetman, and Yellowcake: An Atomic Glossary (Website)

Ah, nuclear jargon. This alphabetized glossary will help translate nuclearese into something more closely resembling English.