Ploughshares Stories

Featured photo: Journalist Charles Loeb in 1958, courtesy of Cleveland Public Library/Photograph Collection Eighty years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the story of how the United States first told the world what had happened—and what it deliberately withheld—remains disturbingly unfinished. Bombshell, written and produced by filmmaker Ben Loeterman and co-produced by journalist…

Today, New START—the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—formally expired. For the first time in decades, there are no legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. At a moment of heightened global tension, the loss of this treaty makes the world even more dangerous. But just…

A story of two chess grandmasters, a love triangle with a Hungarian refugee, CIA and KGB tactics, and a climax set against the backdrop of Able Archer 83—narrative elements that would seemingly point to a cut-and-dry tragedy. But pair them with operettic pop music written by ABBA, and the result is a bonafide Cold War…

Sixty years ago today in the skies over Spain, a US Air Force B-52 bomber on a nuclear alert mission collided with an aerial tanker causing the deaths of seven airmen. The bomber was carrying four B28 thermonuclear bombs. One fell into the sea and the remaining three bombs landed near the small town of…

Amazon’s Fallout returns December 16, dropping us back into a world shaped entirely by nuclear catastrophe. The series may be darkly funny and wildly stylized, but at its core, it’s about something very real: what happens when nuclear weapons are used, what survives—and what doesn’t. Whether you’re new to the show or returning for Season…

In the final issue of the Atomic Alchemy zine series, Jasmine Owens explores the explores the “infinite possibilities of nuclear weapons abolition” and fostering courage in the face of discrimination and violence. Atomic Alchemy Zine #4:“Freedom is the Horizon:” On the Infinite Possibilities of Nuclear Weapons Abolition Author Jasmine Owens Jasmine Owens is a nuclear…

Last week, on October 29, President Donald Trump announced via a late night post on his social media site Truth Social that the U.S. would “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis [with other nations].” The post caused alarm among advocates and policymakers as experts quickly weighed in to read the tea leaves…

On October 24, 2025, Kathryn Bigelow’s new film, A House of Dynamite, releases on Netflix. The premiere follows a limited run in theaters, which rallied the nuclear threat reduction together to engage in the somewhat lost—but not totally forsaken—art of watching movies in community. I first watched A House of Dynamite at a sold-out theater…

What happens when we go to war with ourselves? We fight our brothers and our cousins and our mothers, our children, our friends, colleagues and mentors. What happens when we start to tear at the seams, breaking apart the bonds of trust and objective truth? We tear open all that is dear to us, and…