Video: What to know about nuclear weapons

On October 29th, Donald Trump announced on his social media site, Truth Social, that he had instructed the Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” with other countries. The announcement led to widespread confusion over whether Trump was referring to testing delivery systems or actual nuclear detonations. Trump’s announcement followed on the heels of the Netflix premiere of Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, A House of Dynamite, in which the United States is targeted with a nuclear weapon, prompting some to ask whether the sudden announcement was a reaction to the movie.

Jeffrey Lewis is an expert on nuclear nonproliferation at Middlebury College. In this video, Lewis explains why it is so incredibly difficult to convey the size and destructive force of nuclear weapons, and always has been. Trump’s surprise announcement created confusion, in part because the language around nuclear weapons is often geared towards experts, and because the effects of nuclear weapons are seldom at the forefront of the mainstream news agenda. But as Lewis explains, it’s important that everyone understand how these weapons work, and why the use of even one would constitute a world-threatening catastrophe.