We are probably closer to a nuclear war than any previous point in my lifetime.

As a Generation X kid who grew up during the Cold War, fear of nuclear war is still a deeply ingrained instinct. We read Alas Babylon in school and saw The Day After to give us a sense of what a nuclear apocalypse might be like. Everyone understood it was the summum malum, the end of civilization as we know it.

The fear of nuclear war did not stop all conflict during the Cold War, but it did ensure that conflicts were limited. During that tense time, there were no world wars or sustained fighting between the nuclear powers themselves. Instead, wars took place among proxies far from the territory of the superpowers, such as the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.