A new survey finds that a third of Americans embrace a nuclear strike that would kill a million people.
Imagine that North Korea starts, once again, testing long-range missiles that could reach the United States. Should we drop a nuclear weapon on them, killing a million innocent civilians?
You might expect most people would answer that question with a firm, resounding no. Such an action would be morally despicable, of course. It would lead to many, many deaths. Security experts say it would do very little to advance US interests, and it’d destabilize the whole world, increasing the chance of other nuclear exchanges, with catastrophic consequences.
But it turns out these reasons wouldn’t faze a good number of Americans. A survey by YouGov and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published Monday, finds that a third of Americans would be in favor of a nuclear strike even if it killed a million people.