The Armageddon Letters Project delivers the following three lessons for nuclear diplomacy today:
- Nuclear Armageddon is possible: as a matter of historical record – not merely hypothetical scenarios or other projections – it is now known that a catastrophic nuclear war nearly happened in October 1962.
- Nuclear Armageddon is possible even if no one wants it: in a crisis of this urgency, a series of conscious decisions that would seem unthinkable under normal conditions becomes likely as the pressure to attack first becomes almost too much for leaders to bear.
- Armageddon must be made impossible: the combination of nuclear weapons and human fallibility will eventually result in nuclear destruction if these weapons are not abolished.