Nuclear Warfare: The Psychological Effects and Their Impact on Moral Reasoning

Nuclear weapons confront us as the challenge of our times. To understand the special psychological and moral issues raised by nuclear arsenals and their use, we must first grasp the special nature of these weapons. In a recent book on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the authors highlighted a fact which often escapes public attention; namely, nuclear weapons, many times more powerful than the 12.5 kiloton uranium bomb and the 22 kiloton plutonium bomb dropped respectively on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are qualitatively different from conventional explosives.