Nuclear Awareness

This chapter draws attention to the concept of nuclear awareness that arose in the wake of the nuclear catastrophes. It highlights epistemic and political stakes: the almost unimaginable timetables of nuclear energy (extraction and waste) on one hand, and the threat of instantaneous destruction on the other. The chapter emphasizes nuclear awareness as a critical assertion of nuclear energy and its societal impact and as a trigger of critical thinking of nuclear technology, nuclear power production, nuclear agenda, as well as their challenges and opportunities involved. The chapter analyzes the tools of narrating the Chernobyl disaster in the contemporary nuclear fiction, regarded as a archive of the nuclear Anthropocene and a case of nuclear knowledge management.

Bombing and Mining in War: Evidence from Cambodia

This study explores the political-economic determinants of military strategy during civil war to explain the intensity of suffering that certain conflict zones and their inhabitants suffer due to aerial bombing and landmines. Adversaries seeking post-war rents consider distinct consequences of weapons use in the target society: bombing causes instantaneous destruction, whereas landmines cause persistent but fading negative externalities on human activities, such as labor. Thus, it is expected that economic rents with different characteristics are associated with the use of different types of weapons because the benefits derived from these rents after the conflict vary. By focusing on the nature of economic rents available in conflict zones, this study demonstrates that aerial bombing is more likely when the targeted territory relies economically on renewable resources and industries such as agriculture, whereas landmines are more likely to be used in territories endowed with perishable resources such as gemstones. An empirical analysis utilizing newly compiled geo-coded data on the locations of US airstrikes and landmine contamination during the Cambodian Civil War finds strong positive associations between agricultural productivity and the number of airstrikes, and between the proximity to large gem deposits and landmine contamination, holding major tactical variables constant. The results suggest that societies' economic structures have a sizable effect on the manner in which adversaries fight a war and, therefore, affect how people suffer from it.