The world needs you: Nobel Laureates seek a new movement against nuclear war

Olha Konsevych

The world’s leading scientists are once again warning that the risk of nuclear war is no longer a distant Cold War memory but a growing reality. During the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany, Nobel Laureates David J. Gross, William E. Moerner and Brian P. Schmidt presented a renewed call for nuclear risk reduction.

The discussion built on the Mainau Declaration 2024 on Nuclear Weapons, which renewed a long tradition of Nobel Laureates speaking publicly about the dangers of nuclear war.

For Ukraine, this debate is far from theoretical. The country relinquished the nuclear arsenal it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state and received security assurances under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Russia, one of the states that committed itself to respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and existing borders, later occupied Ukrainian territory and launched a full-scale invasion. The war has been accompanied by repeated nuclear warnings and references to Russia’s arsenal.

In March 2022, 150 Nobel Laureates signed a declaration supporting Ukraine and calling for peace. Four years later, the war continues, while nuclear rhetoric has increasingly entered ordinary political language.

The “half-life of civilisation”

In Lindau, Gross used an intentionally provocative calculation to show how even a relatively small annual risk can become alarming over time.

He referred to an estimate attributed to former US Secretary of Defense William Perry that the annual probability of nuclear war could be around one per cent. If the risk remained at that level each year, Gross explained, the probability of civilisation surviving for roughly 70 years would fall to about one half.

Gross suggested that the present risk might be higher. “If there’s one message you should come away from this, it’s that the half-life of civilisation is 34 years, approximately,” he said.

The expression was not offered as a precise scientific forecast. Gross acknowledged that the probability could not yet be measured with confidence. “It could be even less than 34 years. It could be more,” he said.

His point was that survival until now does not guarantee survival in the future. The absence of nuclear war since 1945 can create a dangerous sense that the system is more stable than it really is.

Gross’s first recommendation to the young scientists listening in Lindau was simple: learn more about the danger. “The most important thing you can do is inform yourself about the reality of the nuclear danger,” he said.

But he did not believe that information alone would change policy. Earlier achievements in nuclear arms control, he argued, were also the result of public pressure. “There really needs to be the kind of movement, political movement, people movement, that led to the test ban treaty, that led to the arms-control treaties,” he said.

Hiroshima and the danger of forgetting

W. E. Moerner approached the same issue from a different direction. He received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy, research that made it possible to observe processes at the level of individual molecules. He has since become involved in efforts bringing Nobel Laureates together with nuclear-policy and arms-control specialists.

During the Lindau discussion, he spoke about a recent visit to Hiroshima. The experience, he said, had been “deeply moving, basically life-changing”.

What struck him was the contrast between the modern city and the remains of the Atomic Bomb Dome. The streets were busy, trees had returned and the recovery of Hiroshima was visible everywhere. But the museum, photographs and accounts of victims made it possible to imagine the same area after the bombing: destroyed, with survivors trying to understand what had happened.

In an exclusive response to Mahabahu, Moerner said personal testimony would become even more important as the generation that witnessed the bombings disappears.

“I think that honest, personal statements about Hiroshima will be the most effective way to emphasise the human consequences,” he said.

“For me, standing in front of the ‘Atomic Dome’ as a reminder of the destruction was very meaningful. It was easier to envision that the entire area where I was standing was completely devastated, with a few survivors wandering around wondering what had happened,” he added.

What should replace New START?

Brian P. Schmidt, who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, explained the nuclear danger through his own childhood.

When Schmidt was eight years old and living in Helena, Montana, his school held a nuclear emergency drill. The city was located near fields of Minuteman strategic missiles. He remembered entering a fallout shelter and seeing emergency supplies left there from an earlier period.

The experience, he said, made “an indelible mark” on his life.

Many younger people have not lived with the same immediate sense that nuclear war could happen. Schmidt argued that they may understand the danger intellectually while instinctively assuming that because nuclear weapons have not been used in war for more than 80 years, they are unlikely to be used now.

That generational distance was one reason the Laureates wanted to involve the young scientists attending Lindau.

Asked by Mahabahu to identify one realistic measure world leaders could take within the next year, Schmidt focused on the relationship between the United States and Russia.

“Honestly, any of the things we called on in Chicago would be good,” Schmidt said, referring to the recommendations developed during the 2025 Nobel Laureate Assembly for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The declaration and its signatories are available here.

“If we could get the US and Russia to work on a successor to the 2010 New START Treaty — and remain committed to its central limits in the meantime — that would be my highest objective,” he said.

START I was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1991. After it expired in 2009, New START followed. Signed by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in 2010, it entered into force in February 2011.

The treaty limited each country to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and heavy bombers. It also established inspections, notifications and exchanges of information intended to reduce uncertainty about the other side’s forces.

New START was extended in 2021 for five years. But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its verification system began to unravel.

On 21 February 2023, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation. He said Moscow was not formally withdrawing, but key verification activities, including inspections and some exchanges of information, ceased. Washington later introduced reciprocal countermeasures. New START expired in February 2026 without a successor.

The wider recommendations discussed by the Nobel Laureates went beyond the US–Russian relationship. They included reinforcing the moratorium on nuclear explosive testing, pursuing the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and reaffirming commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Moerner also argued that China, whose arsenal is expanding, would need to be included in serious future arms-control discussions. “Everyone needs to apply the necessary pressure on global leaders to implement nuclear risk reduction measures,” he said.

Beyond governments

Shortly after the Lindau Meeting, the discussion continued at the Vatican, bringing scientific expertise into contact with the moral authority and global reach of religious communities.

Before the Vatican meeting, Schmidt told Mahabahu that religious leaders could address audiences far larger than those normally reached by scientists and arms-control specialists.

“We are all part of humanity — and religious leaders have an incredibly broad and powerful connection to the people of the planet, substantially more than I do,” he said.

He described the Vatican meeting as an opportunity for their collective voices “to reach a billion people on the need to actively avoid nuclear war”.

The same effort to reach beyond specialist circles shaped a challenge given to around 600 young scientists at Lindau. Schmidt asked them: “What could we do to convince the world to take meaningful steps to lower the risk of nuclear war?”

On the final day of the meeting, several of their proposals were presented. One was designed for an audience far larger than any scientific conference could attract.

The idea was to use the FIFA World Cup final as a global platform for a shared anti-nuclear message. The proposal envisaged the players appearing under the slogan “Life, Not Nukes” during the presentation of the teams.

The warning from Lindau was therefore not only about the number of warheads or the possibility of an accidental launch. It was also about whether the international system can still give countries a credible reason not to seek nuclear protection of their own.

Gross ended his appeal to the young scientists with three words: “The world needs you.”

Photos: Olha Konsevych, 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting ( Headline image: Nobel Laureates David J. Gross)

Olha Konsevych: Journalist, researcher; Vital Voices; GMF; WZB Berlin ;  Max Planck Society alumna ;Mahabahu Correspondent

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