Making the threat of nuclear war personal: An exercise

In 2020, the International Committee of the Red Cross commissioned Ipsos, a firm that conducts market research and public opinion surveys, to examine the views of millennials on “the most important issues affecting people around the world today.”[1] Only two issues were named by the majority of millennials—corruption (54 percent) and unemployment (52 percent). Global warming ranked eighth on the list of concerns, at 40 percent.

Of interest for this short note: Concern over nuclear weapons ranked last, at 24 percent. The finding is quite surprising, especially given that the same poll found that over half of the same millennials—54 percent—believe it is likely that a nuclear attack will occur in the next decade. A more recent poll (in 2023) found 56 percent of millennials believing that they did not know enough about nuclear weapons to assess the benefit or harm to them personally.[2]

These polls give some support to the frequently made observation that nuclear war is far down on the concerns of millennials. Colleagues have offered a variety of possible explanations: They believe that earlier generations solved the problem since there hasn’t been a nuclear war or even the threat of a nuclear war in their experience; there’s nothing they can do about it in any case; it’s too technical to understand the issues; they don’t understand international rivalries between great powers; the topic is too triggering for today’s students to grapple with (more on this point later).

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