Note, November 2014: It has been some time since GCRI has hosted discussion groups. We may revive them at some future point. Meanwhile, we are focusing on other activities.

While the Cold War has ended, enough nuclear weapons remain to cause global catastrophe if they are used in war. GCRI’s nuclear war discussion group explores the possibility of nuclear war occurring, the impacts if it does occur, and the options available for reducing the overall risk. GCRI considers both intentional and inadvertent nuclear war. Intentional nuclear war occurs when two or more parties make a conscious decision to go to war based on accurate information about the state of the world. Inadvertent nuclear war occurs when one or more parties misinterprets a false alarm as being real and launches nuclear weapons in what it mistakenly believes is a counterattack.

Discussion group participants have included Tony Barrett of RAND/GCRI, Seth Baum of GCRI, Jacob Haqq-Misra of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science/GCRI, Martin Hellman of Stanford, Tim Maher of Bard College/GCRI, George Michael of Westfield State University, Benoit Pelopidas of University of Bristol, James Scouras of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Meetings to date are:

10 January 2012: Open discussion (no summary available)

29 November 2012: Nuclear War Group Discusses Ongoing Risk Of US-Russia Nuclear War

8 November 2012: GCRI Nuclear War Group Discusses Nuclear Winter

11 October 2012: Tony Barrett Gives CSIS Practice Talk On Inadvertent Nuclear War To GCRI Nuclear War Group

27 September 2012: GCRI Hosts Discussion Of Nuclear War