From Roger Orpwood, Leigh on Mendip, Somerset, UK
Mark Lynas’s article on the risks of nuclear war was refreshing. The threat of annihilation hangs over us every second of every day, but it seems that politicians and the media prefer to pretend it is all OK(24 May, p 21).
As a design engineer, I know too well the impossibility of developing systems that never go wrong. Nuclear weapons, with their launch-on-warning provisions, constitute one of the most complex systems we have ever developed. It will, of course, go wrong at some point. And that will be the end. As Lynas rightly concludes, we have to get away from the groupthink that can’t see any alternative to the insanity of basing our security on the threat to destroy ourselves.
