June 11, 2025

How Nuclear War Could Start

By: Jon B. Wolfsthal

If a nuclear war happens, it could very well start by accident.

A decision to use the most destructive weapons ever created could grow out of human error or a misunderstanding just as easily as a deliberate decision on the part of an aggrieved nation. A faulty computer system could wrongly report incoming missiles, causing a country to retaliate against its suspected attacker. Suspicious activity around nuclear weapons bases could spin a conventional conflict into a nuclear one. Military officers who routinely handle nuclear weapons could mistakenly load them on the wrong vehicle. Any of these scenarios could cause events to spiral out of control.

To understand how it could all go wrong, it is useful to look at some examples of how it almost did.

Such occurrences are not just possible plots for action movies. All of them actually happened and can happen again. Humans are imperfect, so nuclear near-misses and accidents are a fact of life for as long as these weapons exist.

Today, nine countries have nuclear weapons. Most deploy them in peacetime on some combination of planes, missiles and submarines. Being ready and able to use them is seen as necessary to make them effective; more than 2,000 weapons are on alert and ready for use on short notice. So mishaps and accidents will continue to happen, with unpredictable results.

Read the full article on The Washington Post.

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