The Primer: After reading the Home and Overview pages, the Primer is the suggested next reading. As its name implies, it provides a basic understanding of the issues involved in defusing the nuclear threat.

The Statement: Seven prominent individuals "urgently petition the international scientific community to undertake in-depth risk analyses of nuclear deterrence and, if the results so indicate, to raise an alarm alerting society to the unacceptable risk it faces as well as initiating a second phase effort to identify potential solutions." We hope you too will join the effort.

While the proposed studies are only a first step, they have the potential to lead us to discover and take later steps that are hard to envision in the current world environment. The first step in a long journey does not take us very far but, without it, the journey never starts.

The Paper (1.8 MB PDF): "Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence" was published in the Spring 2008 issue of the magazine of the national engineering honor society, The Bent of Tau Beta Pi. The statement referenced above condenses the paper's key ideas into one page. Sections 2 and 3 of this site's primer are adapted from sections of the paper that can be skimmed or skipped over to avoid repetition. While the paper has a few places with math that may look like Greek (they use Greek letters for symbols), it is possible to skip the math and still get the main thrust of the paper. The Risk Analysis section of this site explains the key ideas of the paper in non-mathematical language.

Sample emails and letters: Bringing up such a weighty subject may seem daunting. These samples are intended to help get you started.

Business cards: To encourage people to visit this site and become involved, print this sheet and cut it into business-card-sized handouts to carry in your wallet or purse.

Archive of emails sent to participants in this effort:
email #1 (27 April 2008)
email #2 (13 May 2008)

News coverage:
IEEE Spectrum (31 March 2008): The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE is the world's largest professional society for EE's. Spectrum is its magazine that reaches 385,000 readers. As part of its coverage, Spectrum sought the opinions of two independent experts whom it uses for comments on risk analysis.