Saving us from ourselves

Today is the 60th anniversary of that fateful day when Little Boy created the biggest cataclysm known to humanity. The day when time stood still and death danced in all its naked glory. 6th August 1945 was a defining moment in the histroy of mankind as it showed that how much power man has mustered in its short stay on earth. Luckily, the last 60 years have not seen anything like those fateful days in Japan, but is it possible that we will be so lucky for next 60 as well. The major nations of the world have enough nuclear power in their arsenal to destroy the world several times over. The potential to cause utter destruction exists, more than ever, so consequently a threat exists. How far-fethched is the scenario that some day this potential may fall into the wrong hands? Can one ever be sure that this is not possible? It is certainly possible because there are enough nuclear weapons & there are enough mad men on the loose (For an extremely well-written take on this, go here). Some of those mad men have great political power & enough resources to be able to acquire those devil's toys. A positive probablity, however small, can not be ruled out that one mad man may have control over a significant amount of nuclear power one day. On a long enough time line, any event -however improbable- is going to occur. The scary part is that we donot know how long that time line is simply because we can never have a realistically accurate estimate of the threat. The only way to be sure of avoiding another Hiroshima or Nagasaki is to completely destroy all nuclear weapons & impose a worldwide moratorium on their development. Ironically though, it may take another one of those to save humanity from humans.