Nobel Laureates Meet In Chicago To Discuss 'Existential Threat' Of Nuclear War

CHICAGO — Nobel laureates and nuclear experts are gathering this week at the University of Chicago to discuss prevention of a nuclear war as the world approaches the 80th year of the nuclear age. The group is pressing world leaders for action on nuclear dangers.

In 1955 and 2024, Nobel Laureates gathered at Mainau to issue warnings to the world about the existential threat posed by nuclear war. While the experts acknowledged that tremendous progress has been made in reducing global nuclear stockpiles and nuclear risks, they claim the world now appears to be headed in the wrong direction.

“Poised at the beginning of a new, complex, and dangerous nuclear arms race, Nobel Laureates and nuclear weapons policy experts must now speak together,” the assembly said in a statement published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Despite having avoided nuclear catastrophes in the past, time and the law of probability are not on our side. Without clear and sustained efforts from world leaders to prevent nuclear war, there can be no doubt that our luck will finally run out.”

The Nobel Laureates and nuclear policy experts held meetings for two-and-half-days in line with the 80th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons explosion in New Mexico, known as the Trinity Test.
Nobel laureates from 10 different countries met last year in Mainau, Germany, where they issued their own declaration known as the “Mainau Declaration 2024 on Nuclear Weapons.” The assembly feels that not enough public attention has been paid to the threat of nuclear danger.

The Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War issued a declaration Wednesday. Read the declaration in its entirety.

Earlier this year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight – the closest it has even come to global catastrophe.

Members of the Atomic Bulletin Science and Security Board warned in January that even a move of a single second should be taken as “an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

The assembly of Nobel Laureates and nuclear policy experts said it was their obligation to prevent the catastrophe of nuclear war.

“These actionable and attainable steps will aid global leaders in this solemn task. We ask that they each be guided by the words of Nobel Laureates Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein: ‘We appeal as human beings to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest,’” the assembly said. “Our survival and the survival of future generations are at stake.”