One push of buttons by the opposing nations and an estimated three hundred million people would perish in less than an hour.

Yet the superpowers have kept on stockpiling more and more warheads. Thus physicist Ralph E. Lapp some time ago pointed out that the United States has stockpiled “enough nuclear explosives to overkill the Soviet Union at least 25 times.”

With good reason, President Nixon warned: “In a nuclear war there would be no winners​—only losers.” “If we are drawn into conflict, the possibility of mutual suicide is very great.”

In the past, when war threatened, national rulers had to weigh the prospects of losing power, losing a portion of the population, losing some industrial strength, and having large sections of major cities destroyed.

But they never had to contemplate the loss of virtually the entire country, of seeing their nation become a place uninhabitable for living things.