"Dangers from nuclear weapons, how physicists can help"

Physicists played critical roles in informing the negotiators of all post-World War II nuclear arms control agreements, especially those limiting nuclear testing and ballistic missile defenses as well as the creation of the IAEA's nuclear-materials safeguards system.

With the end of the Cold War, however, most physicists, like others, turned to other issues, the edifice of nuclear arms control began to crumble, and new nuclear arms races began to emerge, including with China.

During the past two years, under the auspices of the American Physical Society, a group of US physicists has given over one hundred physics colloquia and recruited 850 American physicists to a Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction in which physicists educate themselves and then help educate Congress about the renewed dangers of nuclear war and the possibilities for reducing those dangers.

This talk will provide an overview of the current dangers, what might be done to reduce them, and an invitation fo join the Physicists Coalition.