15-year-old on Gen Z’s nuclear anxiety and the urgent need to choose peace over destruction
I’m 15 years old, and every morning I check the news wondering if today will be the day nuclear war begins.
This week, I attended the peace ceremony in Hiroshima, held to honour the victims and their families of the atomic bombing. Although I don’t speak Japanese, I could feel the speakers’ pain. In the moments of silence and through somber melodies, I kept asking myself: why do nine countries still possess nuclear weapons, six more host them and 34 others endorse them. Do we really want history to repeat itself?
As conflicts are escalating around the world – from Ukraine to Palestine to Iraq – the risk of nuclear war rises. Humanity has built the weapon of its own extinction.
The destruction and power of these weapons are unthinkable. Just one atomic bomb over New York, USA, could kill more than half a million people in seconds. That’s without accounting for radiation, fires, famine and the collapse of society. Lives erased in milliseconds.
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For my generation this isn’t just a distant worry, it’s a constant uncertainty over our future. The term “nuclear anxiety” was first introduced in the 1960s by the American anthropologist Margaret Mead during the Cold War, but as wars escalate today, that anxiety is returning.
A study during the Gulf War found that frequent fear of nuclear war doubled the risk of developing common mental disorders in the following years. Now, this fear is forced upon us.
Gen Z often tries to joke about it to cope. For example, on TikTok you will see videos captioned “WW3 outfit inspo” or “I want a summer glow-up not a Summer blow-up.”
Experts say it’s a defense mechanism – a way to manage overwhelming fear in a world where a single man could decide our fate in minutes.
What haunts me most is that we have no control over this. It’s not fair that one person on the other side of the world can dictate our future. He’s not our president, we didn’t put him in power, yet if nuclear war is declared, we will suffer. The people in power will not – they will be safe in their bunkers while innocent civilians are left to face chaos and misery.
Politicians gambling with humanity
Some claim nuclear weapons deter war because other countries fear attacking a nuclear-armed state. However, only 15% of American Gen Zers think so. Deterrence is just a gamble, and when politicians gamble with nuclear weapons, they gamble with all of humanity. All it takes is just one miscommunication, one miscalculation or one burst of anger, and it is over.
Yet, there is another way. It is slower, harder and less glamorous: communication, peace-making, diplomacy. Yes, it sounds cliché and overly-optimistic, but it is the only way that doesn’t risk turning the planet into ash.
In Hiroshima, I also attended a testimony led by Keiko Ogura, a hibakusha (a survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings) who was eight years old when the atomic bomb exploded near her home.
She described in haunting detail how she had to watch people die and refuse already dying men water in order to save it for her sick father. Today, she dedicates her life to telling her story so it is never repeated. If tensions rise, will we remember her warning?
“Let all the souls here rest in Peace. For we shall not repeat the evil,” she concluded.
Let their stories be the last of their kind, and let Hiroshima and Nagasaki be the first and last time nuclear bombs were ever used. The world cannot afford a second nuclear attack. Ultimately, we are the ones who will inherit this world, so let it be one worth inheriting.
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