Week One - Mar. 8

Introduction to nuclear security and nuclear weapons issues

• “The Illogic of Nuclear Escalation” by Frank Kaplan, Asterisk Magazine
• “Air Force fires commanders over nuclear mix-up” by Andrew Gray, Reuters
• The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman - pp. 10-27 (“Night watch for nuclear war” & Introduction) 
• “Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and a practical plan for dismantling them.” for 80,000 Hours (podcast)
• “Power of the Sun” by Charming Disaster (lyrics)

Week Two - Mar. 15

Nuclear weapons in the Cold War 

• The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman - pp. 141-153 (ch. 6) and pp. 237-273 (ch. 11)
  • Complementary reading: “Russia’s Doomsday Machine” by Bruce Blair
• “Key Moments in the Cuban Missile Crisis” by Patrick Kiger
  • Complementary reading: ““Midnight is upon us”—the Cuban Missile Crisis as seen at the time, in one person’s words” by Harrison Brown
• “Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)” The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Digital Library
• “Nuclear Hotlines” by Steven E. Miller
• “Hotline agreements” by the Arms Control Association
• “It’s a Mistake” by Men at Work (lyrics)

Week Three - Mar. 22

Consequences of nuclear war

Nuclear winter

• “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions” by TTAPS 
  • Complementary reading: “Climate and Smoke” by TTAPS, in response to criticism of the model; or, “Nuclear Winter Theorists Pull Back” by Malcolm W. Browne, for the New York Times
• “Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production” by Xia et al. 
  • Or “Nuclear Famine 2022” by Matt Bivens, MD (less technical)
• Complementary reading: “Food System Adaptation and Maintaining Trade Greatly Mitigate Global Famine in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios” (preprint) by Rivers et al. 

Human extinction

• The Precipice by Toby Ord - pp. 15-21 (Introduction), pp. 92-103 (Ch 4 introduction and “Nuclear weapons“), and pp. 188-197 (“Risks without precedent” and “International coordination”)
• “We will all go together when we go” by Tom Lehrer (lyrics)

Week Four - Mar. 29

Nuclear weapons near-accidents

• “Sources of Human Instability in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons” by Herbert L. Abrams, M.D. 
• “Close Calls with Nuclear Weapons” by the Union of Concerned Scientists
• The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman - pp. 379-409 (ch. 17) and pp. 409-419 (ch. 18)
• Complementary reading: “Military Artificial Intelligence as Contributor to Global Catastrophic Risk” by Maas, Matteucci, and Cooke
• “99 Red Balloons” by Nena (original German version) (lyrics)

Week Five - Apr. 5

MAD and the multipolarity problem

• “Winter-safe deterrence: The Risk of Nuclear Winter and Its Challenge to Deterrence” by Seth Baum
• “Nuclear Weapons in the New Cyber Age” by Stoutland and Pitts-Kiefer
• “International agreements relating to nuclear weapons” by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
• “Remarks by Joan Rohlfing at Effective Altruism Global: London 2021” (video or transcript)
• “Who’s Next?” by Tom Lehrer (lyrics)

Week Six - Apr. 12

Nuclear power accidents

• “The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster with Adam Higginbotham” on My Nuclear Life (podcast)
• “Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident” by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• “The legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster” by Sophie Yeo
• Complementary reading: “Fukushima evacuation has killed more than earthquake and tsunami, survey says”
• “Why the world must protect nuclear reactors from military attacks. Now.” by George M. Moore
• “We Almost Lost Detroit” by Gil Scott Heron (lyrics)

Week Seven - Apr. 19

Non-state actor acquisition of nuclear weapons

• “Use of nuclear and radiological weapons by terrorists?“ by Christoph Wirz and Emmanuel Egger for the International Review of the Red Cross
• “The lost nuclear bombs that no one can find” by Zaria Gorvett, BBC 
• “The Potential for Radiological Terrorism by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State” by Michael Eisenstadt and Omar Mukhlis
• “Securing nuclear material & strong radiation sources” by Steinhausler and Bunn
• “A Nuclear 9/11” by Nicholas D. Kristof
• Complementary reading: “A Mathematical Model of the Risk of Nuclear Terrorism” by Matthew Bunn
• The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman - pp. 446-465 (ch. 21)
• “Talking Atom” by Pete Seeger (lyrics)

Week Eight - Apr. 26

Conclusions

• Flexible depending on interest