The nuclear disarmament movement is a social movement that campaigns for reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons.

The nuclear disarmament movement may be regarded as the first social movement ever to be concerned with existential risk. Because at the time the only known major risk to humanity’s long-term potential was posed by nuclear weapons, however, the concern was not framed in terms of existential risk generally, but specifically in terms of risks of nuclear war. As Toby Ord writes, “existential risk was a highly influential idea of the twentieth century. But because there was one dominant risk, it all happened under the banner of nuclear war.”^[1]

Further reading

Wittner, Lawrence S. (2009) Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Related entries

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | nuclear security | nuclear warfare | Russell–Einstein Manifesto | social and intellectual movements | Trinity

1. ^

   Ord, Toby (2020) The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 63.