Chapter 2 - The Simplicity of Nothingness: Nuclear Holocaust

We have lived with the possibility of annihilation by nuclear war for half a century. The development of the atom bomb was no accident but a logical consequence of our atomising scientific culture. A nuclear holocaust, the spectre of which points to the disintegration at the heart of our Western civilisation, would spell our instant, rather than our gradual, extinction, but, apart from drawing back from such a holocaust, it is debatable whether we have learnt what we need to from it. Perhaps this is because the “end of history”, whether it comes from nuclear war or environmental collapse, defies our ability to give it any meaning other than annihilation. The “nothingness” of the modern age is simply an empty nothingness, beyond our comprehension or imagination.