Year after year, following those August implosions in 1945, we have been told that this time the doom of mankind really is at hand, unless we repent. Unless we junked them or shared them or defused them or banned them or forgot them, nuclear weapons were going to wipe us all out, and sooner rather than later. All the wise men warned us: white-haired scientists and whiz kids, preachers and statesmen, philosophers and poets. A thousand science fiction novels, ten thousand articles and sermons painted the grisly picture of post-atomized earth. Despite all that mass of prophecy and foreboding, it hasn’t happened here.
Not that mankind has been at peace. There has not been a moment of global peace since 1945. As always throughout history, fighting has always been going on somewhere: in China, Greece, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Congo, Algeria, Sinai, Iraq, Hungary, Sudan, Angola, Indochina, Nigeria, Cuba, Indonesia, India, Chad. . . . Still, although quite a lot of human beings have been killed, the fighting has not escalated into a major or general war. It has been limited in geographical extent, in the resources devoted to it, and in the kind of weapons used.
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