near-misses

It may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium...and it is conceivable — though much less certain — that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.

• During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Valentin Savitsky, the captain of a nuclear submarine which had been cut off from radio traffic, decided that a war might have already started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. By chance, Vasili Arkiphov, chief of staff of the USSR flotilla heading to Cuba, was on the submarine and refused to

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It is underappreciated how fortunate we were that essential services and supply chains broadly continued to function during the Covid-19 pandemic, something I saw firsthand managing the team responsible for the supply of fresh fruit at the UK’s second-largest supermarket. Had more extreme social distancing to suppress transmission been necessary,... See more

SARS-CoV-2 is not nearly as infectious as measles, as virulent as SARS-CoV-1, or as deadly to young children relative to older adults as influenza. But if any of those things had been different, we would have been in big trouble.