I don't think it's unreasonable for people to be terrified of a very, very, very small risk of nuclear annihilation.

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) March 3, 2022

I agree here. And the risk is not “very, very, very small.” I’d say it’s only mildly small, and increasing.

It’s not irrational to be terrified of nuclear annihilation because the consequences are so (literally) grave, and mistakes leading to that outcome are easy to make, have nearly occurred in the past and are likely again. In other words, we’ve just gotten lucky but that won’t always be the case.

I’d estimate the prior yearly danger of a potential civilization-eradicating nuclear exchange at about 0.05%, and have now increased to 0.1% due to the Ukraine invasion.