Books

Three novels deal with the concept of civilization committing suicide. Isaac Asimov's and Ron Silverberg's Nightfall presents an alien society that destroys itself every 14 centuries when the light from its six suns is doused for a day. David Brin's The Postman is about American society after a brief nuclear exchange has destroyed all technology and groups of paramilitary have the country in the grip of anarchy. The loss of civilization in George Stewart's Earth Abides is not from a nuclear attack but a virus that has blanketed the earth killing nearly all humans. The few who remain face a life similar to any after nuclear destruction but without the radiation.

Serious works imply the concern many people had and still have about the existence of nuclear arms on this planet. The end of the Cold War has not diminished the potential risk we all bear. The following works, all of the extinction view, present grim scenarios.

A major announcement was given by Paul Erlich, Carl Sagan, and others in The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War. This was one of the first statements meant to inform the general public of the perceived danger.

Bruce D. Clayton in Life After Doomsday: A Survivalist's Guide to Nuclear War and Other major Disasters imagines the less than total extinction and offers suggestions for surviving the expected dangers.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., probes the morality of nuclear armament in Nuclear Ethics.

Jonathan Schell is the most persistent voice against nuclear weapons. The Fate of the Earth, The Abolition, and The Gift of Time all argue the need, ethically, socially, politically, and defensively to eliminate all nuclear weapons from earth.

An extensive bibliography about nuclear winter can be found at this site.