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What College Students Know and Do Not Know About Nuclear Weapons
July/August 2024
By Alison Cartier, Juline Horan, and Molly Mullin
As a general matter, most Americans do not worry much these days about the threat of a nuclear weapons strike on the U.S. homeland. Gone are the Cold War days of duck-and-cover drills in schools, the need to know the location of the nearest fallout shelter, and the lurking dread of possible nuclear annihilation.
Yet with roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads still in existence and heightened geopolitical tensions fueled by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the threat of nuclear catastrophe today arguably is more immediate than at any time since the nuclear age began.1 That was the message that the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of American Scientists signaled when it set its “Doomsday Clock” at 90 seconds to midnight in January 2023 and repeated that judgment this year.2
It is critical that younger generations understand the threat presented by these weapons, most of which are possessed by Russia and the United States. According to survey research that we did for a class at the Catholic University of America, however, nuclear weapons education is virtually missing from schools across the country.3 Too many young people are unaware of the nuclear threats voiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin concerning the war in Ukraine and of the history of nuclear weapons.4 These armaments will continue to affect the future in fundamental ways. It is imperative to understand how young people perceive this issue today and to prepare them to lead in constraining, if not eliminating, these nuclear arsenals.
Class Research Project
As part of a research project for a foreign policy class designed to understand college students’ knowledge about nuclear weapons, we surveyed more than 100 students attending nearby colleges and universities in Washington, D.C. Through our professor, we contacted other professors who distributed the survey to their students. We also distributed it among our peers at Catholic University.
The data showed that many college students lack a comprehensive and standardized knowledge of nuclear weapons. When students were asked, “When was the last time nuclear weapons were used in a war?” 78 percent of respondents answered correctly that it was World War II. Even so, 12 percent believed the answer was the Iraq war. In addition, students were asked, “What piece of legislation limits the spread of nuclear weapons?” To this question, nearly 60 percent of respondents answered correctly, the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Even so, a not insignificant 27 percent of respondents said that no legislation placed limitations on the size of nuclear arsenals.
To assess the depth of knowledge more thoroughly, a handful of the 100 students were also interviewed individually. When asked what background knowledge, if any, the interviewees had on nuclear weapons, answers ranged from knowing little to knowing an extensive amount. Maria, a senior economics major from Minnesota at Catholic University who did not want her last name used, described having “some general” background. “I know about the history of them, such as when they’ve been used during war. I know about some of the destruction of nuclear weapons and the attempts to disarm countries,” she said. At the other end of the spectrum, Mike Graves, a senior history major from Rhode Island also at Catholic University, confessed to having “very little knowledge” of nuclear weapons. “I understand the creation of them and the usage during World War II, but other than that, I don’t know much,” he said.
The stark difference between these answers seems to have its origins in the way that the subject of nuclear weapons is taught or not taught in primary and secondary schools across the country. Our research, although limited, suggests that teaching is neither extensive nor standardized. The interviewees were asked when in school they remembered learning about nuclear weapons, with answers including 7th grade, 10th grade, AP U.S. and European history courses, and college.
Maevis Fahey, a junior politics and philosophy major at Catholic University, said that she first heard about nuclear weapons in middle school, but she specifically remembers “learning about them in more detail in high school Model UN when we discussed nuclear proliferation.” Alternatively, Alex Harvey, a senior politics and history major at Catholic University, said that he did not encounter in depth information about nuclear weapons until college when he took a course on U.S. intelligence that highlighted developments such as the Cuban missile crisis, the Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense program, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks treaties. The contrast in answers to this question again highlights the lack of a substantial, comprehensive education on these issues.
In our interviews, many students expressed curiosity about the fact that Russia and the United States are no longer engaged in active nuclear negotiations, which could mean that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the last remaining nuclear agreement between the two nuclear-armed states, could expire in 2026. Graves, in particular, expressed surprise that there was no conversation in the classroom during his high school and college experience about how “nuclear weapons have vastly changed conflicts in the 21st century.”
Curiousity About Nuclear Arms
Many interviewees said they have heard about nuclear weapons-related issues on the news or social media and are interested in learning more about them and about the problem of nuclear proliferation. Harvey said that he is especially interested in learning more about nuclear weapons in view of a potential conflict between China, which has nuclear weapons, and Taiwan, which does not. A recent survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs underscores this interest, reporting that 62 percent of respondents who identified as being part of Generation Z wanted to learn more about nuclear weapons.5
Yet, some other students said they are afraid to learn about nuclear weapons. As one student put it, “Being oblivious is the best way to protect myself from overthinking the situation.” Knowledge is power, however; given the current geopolitical climate, a lack of knowledge can be dangerous.
The release last year of the blockbuster movie Oppenheimer has made it more difficult for even apathetic students to be oblivious to the nuclear weapons issue, given how the film reignited public discussion on the topic and became a fixture of pop culture. For many young moviegoers, this was their introduction, outside the classroom, to the legacy of U.S. nuclear weapons and their destructive power. When Harvey saw the film, he “did not possess a lot of background information on this particular subject.” Although he first learned about nuclear weapons in a high school history class, “[t]he film helped me better understand the complexity of this topic and made me realize the inevitability of nuclear weapons development,” he said. Another student, Julia Pandolfi, a senior history major at Catholic University, felt the film was lacking because it “concentrated more on Oppenheimer as a person and his ties to communism than the nuclear weapon itself.”
With the release of Oppenheimer, many young people took to social media to share their thoughts and opinions about the film. Some created TikTok videos while others posted on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter), forcing many of their peers to confront the morality of the United States building the world’s most lethal weapon and the environmental impacts of testing nuclear bombs in a way that they perhaps would not have done before. Some social media posts discussed how testing atomic bombs in New Mexico affected those living in the area and the lasting impacts that the testing continues to have.
Social media has provided a platform for many students to engage cursorily with world events. Graves said he would “first discover information on social media and follow up with news sources to assess factual information.” The same was true for almost all students interviewed. Although movies, pop culture, and social media can spark interest in major world events and national security policy, it is difficult to say whether they will have any lasting meaningful effects on individuals’ awareness and understanding of nuclear weapons.
The base for such knowledge must be laid earlier, in a more deliberate way, in the classroom. Local school systems, colleges, and universities must educate today’s students about nuclear weapons because they will be the future voters, choosing elected officials who will have control over the nuclear arsenal and, later, will be the decision-makers themselves.
As one nuclear expert emphasized in an interview, “The problem is that people think [nuclear weapons have] gone away, are out of sight and out of mind,” but this is not the case. China, North Korea, Russia, and the United States are all modernizing or expanding their nuclear arsenals. Young people need to learn about that and start using their political clout to shape a more secure future.
ENDNOTES
1. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, July 7, 2017, 729 U.N.T.S. 161.
2. John Mecklin, ed., “A Moment of Historic Danger: It Is Still 90 Seconds to Midnight,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 23, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/.
3. “Nuclear Disarmament” (presentation, Washington, DC), November 8, 2023 (copy on file with authors).
4. Han Kristensen et al., “Status of World Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists, March 31, 2023, https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/.
5. “What Young Americans Think About Nuclear Weapons,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs. July 27, 2023, https://globalaffairs.org/events/what-young-americans-think-about-nuclear-weapons.