Atomic Anxiety in the New Nuclear Age

In the first blog post by our 2025 Atomic Anxiety Fellows cohort, Zeenat Sabur asks if the concept of atomic anxiety is helpful or not, and examines the politics of our nuclear fears…

Atomic anxiety is a socially shared anxiety, rooted in the fear of nuclear weapons being used and the impact of any such use (Sauer, 2015, p.123). This anxiety is productive. It can be the starting point of disarmament initiatives.

Atomic anxiety that is born out of concerns for the impact of nuclear weapons use is a reason to work towards a world without these weapons: weapons that hold the destructive power to burn and poison us and every being on the planet, as well as the planet itself.

However, this anxiety of the use of nuclear weapons is also a political tool to justify the continuation of deterrence. For example, in the UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review the UK government set out its reasoning for its nuclear modernisation, underpinned by a theory of nuclear deterrence. Part of this reasoning was that Russia poses the threat of war and nuclear use. In the face of this threat, modernising the UK’s nuclear capability enables the UK to protect its – and its allies’ – citizens.

Atomic anxiety is political because on the one hand it may make us proponents of disarmament. Here, for instance, speaking about the the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the Nuclear Ban Treaty initiative to make the possession of nuclear weapons illegal, Beatrice Fihn said in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize:

‘ours is the only reality that is possible. The alternative is unthinkable. The story of nuclear weapons will have an ending, and it is up to us what that ending will be. Will it be the end of nuclear weapons, or will it be the end of us? One of these things will happen’ (Fihn, 2017).

This is an articulation of atomic anxiety, it is the articulation of the belief that should nuclear weapons continue to exist, we will cease to.

On the other hand, one of the officials I interviewed as part of my PhD research told me that if the US were to disarm right now, then this would be catastrophic for there would be no one to stop the rogue states and the terrorists unleashing the apocalypse.

In this way, the anxiety we feel is political: it is instrumentalised to justify either the continued possession of nuclear weapons, or disarmament. This anxiety forces us to pick one of two positions and to believe that the other is the pathway to Armageddon.

Subsequently, atomic anxiety is not helpful. To clarify here, fear and the anxiety are reasonable responses to the potential use of nuclear weapons. These weapons should terrify us. But if we are to truly engage with the right way forward, then this anxiety is a hindrance.

Atomic anxiety is a hindrance because it exists based on an assumption that either the possession or the disarmament of nuclear weapons will lead to utter destruction, and it forecloses the possibility of other possible realities.

Here it is important to note that the existence of nuclear weapons has already led to the end of many worlds: those of the people and communities and ecosystems that have been tested on. So, the very existence of nuclear weapons today means that worlds have already been destroyed.

My point here is that the anxiety over the ending of ‘our world’, is unhelpful when engaging with nuclear politics today.

• Firstly, atomic anxiety puts us in a position where we want to soothe ourselves, and sometimes the reasoning of nuclear weapons states – especially ‘our’ nuclear weapons states – will soothe us. This leaves us in a position where we simply accept the continued existence of nuclear weapons, as long as it is by ‘our’ states.

• Secondly, if our anxiety stems from the belief that the continued existence of nuclear weapons will absolutely lead to the apocalypse, and we also know that we cannot make all nuclear states disarm, then this is paralysing.

If we hold onto the belief that should the ‘good’ nuclear states disarm, then the rogue ones will kill us all, then we end up wanting the ‘good’ states to keep their weapons, but then we are back to deterrence, and the possible use of nuclear weapons, and therefore an impending end. In this way we are stuck, with every option leading to an apocalypse.

Significantly, atomic anxiety is rooted in fears as to what would happen if a nuclear bomb is used in future. Of course, nuclear bombs have been used – in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and they have been tested with so much destruction and harm caused to humans and the planet.

If atomic anxiety is rooted in what might happen in the future, then a way out of this anxiety can be a focus on the present. At present there is no guarantee that there will be a nuclear war if states continue to rely on deterrence, and there is also no guarantee that there will be a nuclear Armageddon if they disarm.

It is important to stay in the present and remember this as an antidote to atomic anxiety, because it is only when we choose our politics free from anxiety that we can be truly concerned about the type of world we wish to live in, rather than being concerned with soothing our anxiety.

When both sides believe that the other side’s position will lead to the apocalypse, this closes down the possibility of dialogue. It is only if we stay in the present and soothe our anxiety in this way, that we can listen to the other side. It is this listening that is crucial to dialogue, and it is dialogue that will help us move towards disarmament.

—

Zeenat Sabur is a PhD researcher at the University of Manchester. Her PhD looks at the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons through the lens of narratives.

This blog is the first in a series of articles by the Atomic Anxiety in the New Nuclear Age Fellows Cohort. These articles represent the view of the author and not necessarily those of the project as a whole or other individuals associated with the project.