Living With the Scourge of Our World: Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Nuclear weapons were conceived in secret by men working in the middle of the New Mexico desert to bring an end to the Second World War. Since then, they have become vital to the maintenance of the U.S. National Security State. After the Cold War ended, the general public no longer lived with the constant threat of nuclear war, but nuclear weapons did not disappear. They play a very large role in the workings of international politics and fears of nuclear war have since been reignited by the conflict in Ukraine. This thesis delves into the way that nuclear weapons have shaped public consciousness, the dangers they still pose, the people who control them, and the way they are represented on the screen with the goal of stimulating more discussion about them by anthropologists.