Published March 5, 2026
BY OLIVIA FORT
Nuclear weapons are often treated as distant relics of the Cold War—something briefly mentioned in history textbooks and rarely discussed in classrooms. Yet the world facing the students of today looks nothing like a closed chapter: Global nuclear risk is rising, not receding, and the indicators are impossible to ignore.
The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, now stands at 85 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been. Midnight represents global catastrophe, and the closer the hands move, the more danger the world is in. Scientists move the Clock based on real-world threats, and this year they pushed it forward because nuclear tensions are rising faster than diplomacy can slow them down. A shift this drastic means experts largely believe the world is closer to a nuclear crisis today than at any point in modern history.
One of the clearest signs of this shift is the collapse on Feb. 5 of New START, the last remaining arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia. With its expiration, the two largest nuclear powers now operate with no binding limits on the size or structure of their arsenals for the first time since 1972. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned that the treaty’s breakdown “removes the final guardrail in a dangerously accelerating arms race,” a concern echoed across the nonproliferation community.
Washington’s posture has also shifted. President Donald Trump has stated that the United States must “have the biggest, the strongest and the most powerful nuclear capability in the world,” signaling support for expanding the arsenal and even revisiting nuclear testing—an idea former National Nuclear Security Administration officials have called “destabilizing” and “unnecessary.”
Despite this reality, nuclear issues remain largely absent from most high school curricula. Students learn about World War II, but rarely about the modern nuclear landscape. Government classes cover the branches of power, but not the systems capable of reshaping global stability in minutes. The result is a generation expected to inherit nuclear risk without ever being taught how that risk works.
For three years, I’ve participated in the Critical Issues Forum at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. I’ve met students from across Pakistan, India and Japan who arrive with a level of awareness most American classrooms never provide. Their perspectives make clear how unprepared U.S. students are for the world they’re entering.
Nuclear nonproliferation education offers a necessary corrective to this growing danger. Introducing students to the history of nuclear weapons and the humanitarian consequences of their use makes the issue impossible to dismiss as abstract. Weapons of mass destruction stop functioning as distant symbols and instead become systems with real human stakes. This knowledge draws a clear line between stability and escalation, and it equips young people to recognize that nuclear risk is not theoretical, not historical and not someone else’s problem.
The need for this education is not theoretical. Decisions made by governments today will shape the world students live in tomorrow. Without foundational knowledge, the public cannot meaningfully engage with or respond to these decisions.
Nuclear nonproliferation education should not be an optional enrichment topic. It is a civic necessity, and schools should treat it as such.
