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Joe,

It seems what lies at the heart of the problems you reference is near universal nuclear weapons denial. You know, most people, all the way to the top, won't concern themselves with what you're discussing because in their hearts they think the worst just couldn't happen.

Let's consider Substack to be a sample of the educated segment of the population. We can observe that, other than a tiny handful of blogs from experts such as yourself, there is very close to no interest in nuclear weapons on this platform, as is true in the wider society as well.

Why is that? Pretty much everyone knows, IN THEORY, intellectually, that nuclear war could happen and would be disastrous. But the thing is, emotionally, almost nobody really believes that nuclear war will actually happen.

It's important here to ignore what people may say about this, and look at what they actually do, which almost always is.... pretty close to nothing. You know, now often did nuclear weapons come up in the recent election? Biden too. Almost nothing, right? All the way to the top, whatever we might say, we don't really believe the worst can happen.

This pattern of near universal nuclear weapons denial is a mirror of how we typically relate to our own personal mortality. Intellectually we all know we're going to die some day, but emotionally, we don't really believe it. These existential scale issues are just too big for us to process.

As example, I ignored my teeth for 20 years. Intellectually I knew that was a bad plan, but emotionally I thought I could get away with it. That is, until recently when I had two teeth removed, with a third one perhaps to follow. Aha, NOW I get it! My dental decay denial has been punctured, not by reason and facts, but by pain and loss.

The point here is that, so long as almost the entire population all the way to the top is living deep in nuclear weapons denial, an emotional experience, experts can shovel reason and facts at them all day long and it will make little difference, because almost nobody is listening on that channel. Isn't this what the evidence is trying to tell us?

So what then?

The only thing capable of puncturing our personal mortality denial, or culture wide nuclear weapons denial, is some real world event. In the case of nuclear weapons, that's the next detonation.

My request to you and all the other experts is this. Please plan for that day.

When the next detonation happens (if it's not THE BIG ONE), you and all the other experts are going to be invited on to all the news shows. What are you going to say?

You can't say "nuclear weapons are really bad!" because, duh, now everyone can see and BELIEVE that for themselves in the hysterical around the clock graphic news coverage of a horrific event.

When the moment of great opportunity arrives how will the expert and activist community grasp it? What will you do with it? How will you take full advantage of a pivotal moment that may not come again?

Let's talk about that?

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