Today there is universal public knowledge about the dreadful effects of nuclear war; but it wasn't always this way. The philosopher Bertrand Russell and the physicist Albert Einstein were two leading figures in the creation of public understanding of, and opposition to, nuclear war. The last public act of Einstein's life was to sign a world-changing manifesto against nuclear war.

Nuclear Weapons: Cold War Secrecy

In the years following World War 2, the USA and the USSR raced to develop ever more powerful nuclear weapons. The development was carried out in secret and covered by disinformation. Scientists working outside the military were able to deduce what was being developed (see Joseph Rotblat's "detective work" on the Bikini Atoll H-bomb test), but to speak out was professionally dangerous: in the US it could lead to blacklisting as a Communist, and in the USSR it could lead to the gulag.

Under these circumstances, Bertrand Russell, then in his 80s, wrote (11 February 1955) to Einstein saying:

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