In a series of works published in the early 1960s, Herman Kahn, a RAND strategist, was arguing that the United States could survive an all-out nuclear war and even resume something like a normal life. Magazines like Life and Time were running features on civil defense that showed happy families emerging from their fallout shelters ready to build the world anew. Hopeful visions that we could survive or even prosper after a nuclear war gave cover to wage one. “Death in the Nuclear Age” begins by invoking that most basic human fear — of death. For much of history, we denied the reality of death through faith in the immortality of the body or the soul.

Source: New York Times May 11, 2018 09:45 UTC