Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Parts 1 and 2 first)
     Despite the impossibility of even Russia’s and China’s combined nuclear forces launching a successful first strike which would knock out the United States’ ability to cause catastrophic damage in response, the U.S. might be headed for increases in its nuclear forces.
     The Strategic Posture Commission’s report on preparing for threats from 2027 through 2035 states that the U.S. nuclear force must be “either larger in size, different in composition, or both” if it is to be able to address both a revisionist Russia and a China that the report claims is “pursuing a nuclear force buildup on a scale and pace unseen since the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race that ended in the late 1980s.”
     The commission’s report goes on to recommend that the U.S. urgently send more nuclear warheads to its deployed carriers, deploy, or base nuclear forces to the Asia-Pacific theater, increase planned numbers of nuclear-capable bombers, investigate fielding road-mobile nuclear missile carriers and prepare to deploy the future Sentinel ICBM in a configuration that carries multiple independent re-entry vehicles. Currently, each Minuteman III ICBM only carries one warhead, because of limits imposed by New START.
     Russia is also pouring resources into upgrading its nuclear arsenal, with a recent test of a new type of heavy ICBM, the RS-28 Sarmat, apparently having failed.
     The Sarmat is one of six weapons that Putin revealed at his 2018 annual address. A video animation showed Russian missiles flying toward a target resembling Florida. Two U.S. analysts recently claimed to have found a likely deployment site for another one of Russia’s nuclear-capable weapons heralded by Putin in 2018, the Burevestnik. Russia has also suggested that it may resume nuclear testing, preparing facilities on the island of Novaya Zemlya, where the Soviet Union tested the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated.
     Putin on September 25 proposed broadening the scope of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, suggesting that attacks by “nonnuclear countries with the participation or support of a nuclear country” could trigger a nuclear response, in a clear reference to Ukraine and its Western backers. The same day, China launched a nuclear-capable ICBM into the Pacific Ocean, its first ICBM test outside of its territory in over 40 years.
     Besides potentially sending nuclear warheads to existing carriers and developing new weapons systems, the U.S. recently announced it would deploy nonnuclear cruise missiles that would previously have been banned under the INF treaty to Germany, with Putin promising to respond in kind and lift a self-imposed moratorium on deploying intermediate-range missiles if the deployments go ahead.
     It has been reported that Russia has deployed nuclear weapons in Belarus, which had not hosted them since the early 1990s.
     With many changes to nuclear and conventional missile force postures taking place, relations between the West and Russia and China have sunk to their lowest point since the Cold War. With more countries building up significant stockpiles of nuclear warheads, the world could already be living through the beginning of the next nuclear arms race. If the nuclear powers don’t agree on new limits, it could be just as dangerous as the last one.

Ambient office = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Granny Smith apple from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
    The next major bilateral treaty to collapse was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned ground-launched missiles with ranges between three hundred and ten miles and three thousand and four hundred miles. The U.S. had long accused Russia of failure to comply with the treaty, with the Obama administration finding that a cruise missile tested by Russia in 2014 violated the treaty’s range limits. The Trump administration announced that it would withdraw from the treaty in October 2018, with Russia responding that is would also do so.
     These bilateral arms control treaties reduced the number of warheads from a peak of over sixty thousand when the INF treaty was signed in 1987 to less than ten thousand when New START was signed in 2011.
     In addition to Russia’s alleged violations of the INF treaty, the Trump administration mentioned China’s failure to participate and the need to prepare for a possible conflict in the Southern Pacific.
     China’s planned expansion of its nuclear arsenal poses an obstacle to nuclear negotiations that did not exist during the Cold War, when non-American and Soviet arsenals were small enough to safely ignore. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. connected the prospects of a new nuclear agreement with Russia to the idea that China should join New START or another trilateral nuclear treaty. In 2023, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the U.S. found that the United States “will no longer be able to treat the Chinese nuclear threat as a ‘lesser included case’ of the Russian nuclear threat.”
    According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China is expanding its nuclear forces and may have deployed “a small number of its nuclear warheads” in 2023. It is expected to continue increasing its nuclear arsenal over the next decade and could match U.S. or Russian numbers of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2034, although its overall number of warheads would remain lower.
     Whether the world will experience a massive increase in the number of warheads stockpiled and deployed if New START is allowed to expire without a replacement remains unclear. Daryl Kimball is the head of the Arms Control Association (ACA). He said that the U.S. and Russia have more efficient ways to increase the size of their deployed arsenals. Following the expiration of the treaty, “they will both have the capacity to double the number of deployed warheads by ‘uploading’.” This means increasing the number of nuclear warheads present on delivery systems that are already deployed.
     Pranay Vaddi is the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. He says that while the United States must be prepared for the constraints set out in New START to “disappear without replacement,” the U.S. does not “need to increase [its] nuclear forces to match or outnumber the combined total of [its] competitors.”
     Considering the U.S.’s existing second-strike capability, it would seem that more is not necessarily better. Just one submarine out of between eight and ten at sea at any time carries some 100 warheads. This is enough to “obliterate a large country and kill many tens of millions of people,” according to Kimball.
Please read Part 3 next

Ambient office = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 3 Parts
     The expiration of the New START treaty in 2026 could lead to a new unrestrained nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Russia. China’s expanding nuclear arsenal and its refusal to participate in arms control agreements pose a new challenge to global security. The breakdown of arms control treaties and escalating tensions between nuclear powers increase the risk of nuclear war.
     U.S. President Joe Biden said in 2022 that “For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons…. We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.”
     The stark warning from the U.S. President came after Russia’s Vladimir Putin said that his government would “use all the means at our disposal” if Russia’s territorial integrity was threatened. Russia has suffered major setbacks in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and been forced to draft hundreds of thousands of civilians to bolster the military.
     It was not the first time that Putin had threatened the possibility of using nuclear weapons in connection with the war in Ukraine. In a September 21, 2022, speech announcing a partial military mobilization, Putin said, “This is not a bluff.”
     Despite Putin’s rhetoric, U.S. officials have indicated they have seen no material preparations for a nuclear strike by Russia. Some experts have pointed out that nuclear weapons “are not that useful to achieve military objectives.” While a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine seems unlikely, the risk of a new nuclear arms race continues to increase.
     Russia and the U.S. have withdrawn from several key arms control treaties over the past years. Only the New START treaty is still in force and due to expire in 2026. The treaty limits the numbers of nuclear warheads, launchers, and bombers the two signatories can deploy. Russia says its participation in the treaty is suspended, although it has promised to abide by the limits for now.
     If New START expires without a replacement, the two major nuclear powers will have no restrictions on how many nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles they can deploy for the first time since the START I treaty entered force 30 years ago, in 1994.
     The loss of nuclear arms control treaties began in the early 2000s, when the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM). Signed in 1972, this was one of the first treaties limiting deployed warheads, from the same year that aimed to avoid an arms race by maintaining parity between the Soviet Union and the U.S. The interim agreement that resulted from the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT I was signed around the same time.
     The ABM Treaty was designed to eliminate one of the reasons that the United States or Soviet Union would require a large arsenal. If the U.S. and Russia only had a limited capability to shoot down incoming missiles, there would be less need to launch overwhelming numbers of warheads. When the U.S. withdrew, Russia immediately declared it would no longer abide by the limits agreed to in the START II treaty. Both powers had decided to adhere to the START II treaty even though the treaty had not formally entered into force.
Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Beefsteak tomato from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 89 nanosieverts per hour