Con(fusion): Down in the Dumps in the Nuclear Age

It is impossible for those examining the psychosocial effects of the nuclear age to identify tangible and verifiable causes and effects. It is undeniable, however, that nuclear weapons have permeated all aspects of politics, identity and culture: the nuclear age is a term in common usage, as is "nuclear family"; power in the international community is determined by the possession of nuclear weapons; and nuclear weapons feature as a means of salvation from Martians and meteors in Hollywood films right up to the latest James Bond film that features plutonium as a great aphrodisiac.

The history of war claims various weapons as markers of human development and as sources of profound social change from the catapult to swords, guns, bombs, and then weapons of mass destruction. The sovereignty-defying nuclear weapon, occurring simultaneous to the sovereignty-based United Nations, has both marked and undermined the political structures of our times, and has influenced the behavioural and linguistic practices between nation states at the United Nations.

The continuous 55-year UN conversation on the subject of nuclear weapons has aroused the use of emotive language by states and their spokespeople. An extremity in language, mostly ridiculed or considered bad taste in the diplomatic code of behaviour, seems to be justified by the absolute nature of this weapon. This reflects the inherent contradiction in the UN as the body designated to resolve political differences through dispassionate dialogue, but structurally incorporating the greatest political dividing lines. The profound nature of the response both from nation states and from "the people" is manifest in expressions of fear and horror, but also of hope for a world in which weapons that are suicidal, genocidal, and ecocidal are not "essential" for the "foreseeable future."

But the visibility of the future has indeed been damaged by this weapon. A 1982 study interviewed 1,000 Boston grammar and high school students and found that a large majority of the children equated their own death with annihilation from an external source. A Harvard University team of psychiatrists went to the Soviet Union in 1983 to conduct a similar study and results showed that Soviet children had an even deeper fear of nuclear first strike than their US contemporaries. Ninety-nine percent of the Soviet youths interviewed reported they were very worried about war as compared to fifty-eight percent of US youths. Only six percent of the Soviet youths said the two nations would survive a war, twenty-two percent of the US youths thought survival was possible.

The international security environment has not changed enough qualitatively to eliminate the basis of these fears, nor can we expect the individuals interviewed in 1982 and 1983 to have reason to feel more secure today. We see countless examples in the former Cold War enemy states that the theory of gaining identity through weapons and violence prevails — from national security discourse to the acts of children murdering each other at school or for a pair of Levis jeans.

The World Health Organisation estimates that near one million deaths from suicide take place every year, and that depression is one of the most prevalent of mental health problems, is the fourth major cause of disease burden worldwide, and is the leading cause of the global burden of disease for women between 15 and 44 in both developed and developing countries. The reasons for depression are complex, of course, but the point here is that an international security regime based on nuclear weapons is the pervasive global backdrop of every person’s life today. It can only compound despair and loss of hope.

Many of us simply feel embarrassment that humanity has not evolved from this technically sophisticated form of barbarism. Many are confused and question how the pure science of nuclear physics has led to the pure faith of nuclear deterrence. We question how the nuclear weapon has acquired a civilising role through the theory of deterrence: Has the magnitude of this suicidal, genocidal, and ecocidal weapon really inhibited humanity from annihilating itself or parts of itself? This is a theory, based on a short history of non-use, and it can never be proven. It can only be disproven — and only through use of nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, the nuclear age is visited upon the lives of ordinary people who contemplate the confusing, cynical, and circular nature of these theories and logic. Not unlike the cancer caused by culpable releases of radiation, it will take generations to document and account for the psychosocial trends and impacts of the nuclear age. My peers and I personally know the fear associated with growing up in a Cold War nuclear target country and I can testify that the looming spectacle of nuclear apocalypse affected choices made by my now dead friends. I believe the stories of women in my organisation who remember with horror and shame the day the bomb dropped, who remember the day they received a letter from the school asking where their child should be sent should the three-minute warning be issued, who describe the days of "duck and cover" as days of horror. In time, we will have more answers about how human beings assimilated these kinds of experiences.

When the Nuclear Weapons Convention enters into force, perhaps then we will culturally acknowledge the burdens carried not only by heads of state and scientists, but by the generations of ordinary people who were not saved from the social and psychological scourge of this weapon.

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