I know I am a few generations off, but I never saw any 'subculture of scientists' or Los Alamos guys at the highly successful "Terminator" movies or at "War Games" in the 80s, there were just way too many other people there...

The dream of the superweapon is still a nightmare today, even if it now needs to compete with the fear of terrorists and global climate change.

Looking forward to reading your book.

I'd rather buy locally, but recently had a bad experience.

It will be interesting to see what a friend of mine thinks who is an award-winning science writer.

Please don't worry, but I know how hard it can be to take a negative review. We're rootin' for you!

Yes, I bet you weren't the only one who had nightmares during the cold war. Unfortunately, people forget the real fear of those days.

And the thing is, I think everyone has suffered through their own fear of Super Weapons. I remember a couple of years (fourth and fifth grade) when I'd have a recurring dream about nuclear war. It was the early-80s, nearing the end of the cold war, and for a kid, it was scary enough to know these weapons existed. So I think both books do, in fact, resonate with a general populace.

As for Portentousness and Miasmic--he used the rarer definitions of the words without sufficient context to know that's what he meant, and so while they might be technically correct I don't think they helped get his point across.

Anyway. I'm looking forward to reading your book, Peter.

In a sense both sides are right: it seems to me nuclear weapons have been a deterrent. In fact I argue in my book that it was partly the doomsday culture - fiction & film - inspired by Szilard's idea of an ultimate world-destroying weapon that helped show people the terminal consequences of a war fought with wmd.

Clearly though in the Cold War we were targets for Soviet nukes. And it wouldn't have taken very many to wipe out our green and pleasant land.

But I don't think that the fact that there has not yet been a nuclear war in some way justifies the existence of nuclear arsenals. Morally I don't think nuclear weapons can be justified. A nuclear bomb is (to quote Enrico Fermi & Isidor Rabi, two leading atomic scientists) "an evil thing considered in any light".

I hope this goes some way to answering your question - I would be interested to hear your views too! The news regarding the risks of an accident at Greenham was indeed shocking. A further example of how our lives were very much in the balance in the Cold War...and perhaps still are today.

For a related reason, I would be interested sometime to hear your take on Michael Heseltine's attitude to Greenham Common and its peace camp. His view is that the missiles saved us from attack during the cold war, the protestors' is that it made us a target. Last week we heard about the danger it posed to the surrounding area in case of an 'accident'.

In short, under what circumstanceds is a nuclear deterrent justified, if ever, and how can we ever know (does the study of history help us)?