For eight decades, the world has been on the edge of a nuclear precipice. The US and the Soviet Union each had at their disposal a massive array of launchers ready to fire a barrage of nuclear weapons that could, in a single day, kill hundreds of millions of people.

The world is an even more dangerous place today. The capacity of nuclear armed superpowers like the US and China to obliterate human life with the touch of a button far exceeds that of the Cold War period. Nuclear weapons are the most obscene but logical conclusion of a whole system based on economic, political and military competition.