Ploughshares Stories

Art is an avenue for activism, allowing people to shed light on important issues. It maintains a provocative purpose in asking an audience to sit, think, and feel. Such a medium could not be more useful for tackling something as large, global, and complex as nuclear disarmament. Luckily, through avenues of faster information dissemination and…

The US and Israel have begun a senseless, unprovoked, and illegal war against Iran, with no viable plan for its conclusion. This conflict could unfold with incomprehensible losses for innocent civilians across the region. The American people oppose this war, and the US Congress did not approve it. At Ploughshares we have long fought for…

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…