Iran War and Nuclear Winter

Iran War and Nuclear Winter

This letter was emailed March 4, 2026, to the physics faculty at the University at Albany, State University of New York (USA).

Greetings UAlbany Physics Folk,

I write briefly today to ask that you quickly organize to educate the public about nuclear winter. The Iran War is stirring religious sentiment among United States military commanders in favor of holy war and Armageddon. Meanwhile, public awareness of the civilization-ending nature of nuclear winter has faded since Carl Sagan spoke in 1983 of the nuclear standoff as resembling two people standing in a room awash with gasoline, one holding some thousands of matches and the other holding some other thousands of matches. Asking your students how much they know about nuclear winter might terrify you, especially given the following, a fruit of my researches since I graduated. Trigger warning: The following discusses disturbing issues.

Rape and adultery are reproductive strategies, in which a man seeks to produce a child that will be raised by other people, enabling the man to produce more children than he could otherwise. Obviously, not every rape or adulterous union is consciously directed toward reproduction, and many involve conscious effort to prevent reproduction. These facts do not change the biological nature of rape or adultery.

War and genocide are other reproductive strategies, in which men kill so as to make room in the ecology for more of their offspring. Hitler’s call for lebensraum illustrates the point. Obviously, not every war or genocide is consciously directed toward reproduction. This fact does not change the biological nature of war or genocide.

Promotion of the apocalypse is a reproductive strategy. In the most extreme form of this strategy, one man would become the equivalent of Noah, father to all subsequent people, though as far as I know, such a breeding cohort would provide insufficient genetic diversity. Still, by creating a small but genetically diverse breeding group, a man could imagine causing his genes to be radically overrepresented as long as humanity persisted.

This dream has been depicted many times in movies, both as desirable, for example in When Worlds Collide, and as ridiculous, for example in Doctor Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Human beings are inspired by interpretations of stories, their own interpretations or interpretations presented to them, as in this week’s mass at Albany’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which I discussed in my last letter. It is all too easy to read the New Testament as a promise of maximal lebensraum for the right Christians.

Thus, I implore you to educate the public, via all media you can interest in the cause, about the civilization-ending character of nuclear winter, as depicted in a relatively mild, but still absolutely horrifying, fashion in Threads, the British equivalent of The Day After, which did not depict nuclear winter. Note the prominence of reproduction in Threads, including at the very end. The message is clear and may provide an antitoxin to the ambition of those who would emulate Noah, including billionaires who own survival bunkers in New Zealand.

Because of nuclear winter, none of us will persist for very long after large-scale nuclear war, except maybe as hunter-gatherers.

Please spread the message, both within the physics community and publicly. Thank you for your time.

Best wishes,
James

P.S. I’ll include a version, improved by light editing, of my last letter below. I’ll also post recent letters that include material on Iran, at www.fpmalbany.org.

Resource:

Iran War, Nuclear War, and Fear of Death

This is a lightly edited version of a letter that was emailed to His Eminence Cardinal Pierre, Papal Nuncio to the United States, on March 2, 2026.

Your Eminence,

Greetings. Today, this servant of Your Eminence writes about the existence of a state of world war and to warn of the extreme risk of global thermonuclear war within months. As a complex systems scientist and a person who started using the techniques of the field to model God in high school, before learning that the field existed, this servant of Your Eminence points out that war fever is emergent, meaning that it need not be ordained by anyone. Emergent war fever was modeled by the ancient Greeks and Romans using a male deity, the war god, in contrast to a female deity, the goddess of strategic warfare. This servant of Your Eminence will provide an overview of the situation, followed by a concrete recommendation for His Holiness and another recommendation for everyone who reads this letter.

The United States attack on Iran was conducted without any declaration of war. Negotiations were ongoing between the two countries. This servant of Your Eminence has heard it claimed that the attack was opportunistic, the timing chosen to assassinate Iran’s supreme leader and top military leaders. This servant of Your Eminence has also heard it claimed that Iran had made a concession that should have ended the crisis, namely agreeing not to stockpile enriched uranium.

If the United States attacked because the justification for attacking was about to be lost via Iran’s capitulation, the leaders of the United States today are as evil as Richard Nixon was when he derailed the Vietnam War peace negotiations in 1968 to get elected president. In any case, leaders of nuclear-armed nations could be forgiven for regarding the United States at this time as lawless and a threat to their lives, which tends to destabilize the nuclear standoff.

The president of the United States spoke to the nation yesterday in a six-minute, taped speech with two jump cuts, around time stamps 0:52 and 5:00 in the linked video, suggesting that the United States is being led by a man who sometimes lacks the capacity to give a six-minute speech live. Pres. Trump is also plainly terrified of death, as evidenced by the gold with which he surrounds himself in the oval office and his otherwise gratuitous citation in the speech of the great wealth of the United States, money being known to psychologists as a talisman against death. A leader’s impending death may inspire the leader to make endless war in a vain attempt, for example, to bind God’s hands by making themselves indispensable. The wrecks of once-great leaders, and wraiths of poor ones, frequently refuse to retire, oftentimes seemingly driven by fear of death.

The United States has renamed its Department of Defense as the Department of War. The secretary of war is tattooed with a Jerusalem cross and the motto “Deus vult,” which some interpret as signs of extremist views. The manner in which Secretary Hegseth presents himself does not suggest that he constitutes a stabilizing influence but rather the reverse. Even if appearances are false in this case, the effect is to increase the likelihood of nuclear war by making the United States seem more threatening.

In general, the United States is behaving unpredictably and belligerently, which is inherently dangerous and becomes existentially dangerous when nuclear weapons are involved.

Meanwhile, the United States has managed to fall for a deliberate or emergent rope-a-dope strategy in recent years, depleting crucial elements of its conventional arsenal over the course of the Ukraine War, the Gaza slaughter and demolition, and now the Iran War. Officials speak of the war against Iran lasting at least a matter of weeks, which experts say will leave inventories of some key weapons “significantly reduced.” Besides this, United States forces have been weakened by extended deployment, both at home and abroad. The situation, if the Iran War is not shut down promptly, will soon invite China to invade Taiwan and North Korea to invade South Korea, putting pressure on the United States to respond with nuclear weapons if it lacks sufficient conventional arms.

Oh, and nuclear-armed Pakistan is at war with Afghanistan while guards at the United States embassy in Karachi are killing Pakistani people protesting the Iran War.

The likelihood that global thermonuclear war will break out owing to a mistake is increased by the tensions of global conventional war. Furthermore, the world just learned that artificial intelligence usually chooses to attack with nuclear weapons in wargames. Your Eminence is desired to note that militaries have been using artificial intelligence systems in planning for years, including Palantir, a creature of Peter Thiel, who has interesting ideas about the anti-Christ. This servant of Your Eminence cannot know the degree to which any leader is still thinking for themselves.

In the midst of all this, Your Eminence, the priest, perhaps the rector, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, New York, USA, yesterday gave a sermon in which he once again said that death was not intended for people, an issue about which this servant of Your Eminence has written before; in which he deprecated goodness twice and friendliness once; in which he spoke about the miracle at Fatima in 1917 and thereby brought the Russia prophecy to some minds, with its mention of “a night illumined by an unknown light”; in which he repeatedly mentioned “light” and the Trinity, in keeping with the Gospel reading, of course, but to an audience that may be reminded, consciously or not, of the dawn of nuclear weapons at the Trinity Test; and in which he said, “…we can hope in the immortality of our bodies,” to people who may soon die in nuclear war if they fail to protest vigorously now.

Your Eminence, this servant of Your Eminence suggests that His Holiness issue guidance to all priests concerning their sermons next Sunday, to promote reduction in the risk of nuclear war, rather than the opposite, as seemed to occur yesterday at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. This servant of Your Eminence suggests wording along the lines that ancient Greek or Roman people might have followed, praising wisdom over strength of arms and hence elevating Our Lady, in Her aspect akin to Minerva, to eclipse the Father, Who wears His aspect akin to Mars these days.

Your Eminence, this servant of Your Eminence asks all who read this letter to speak against nuclear war now and in favor of the established norms of warfare, which the United States is flouting.

Some people fear death too much, and some people don’t fear it enough.

Yours in God, regardless of models of God,
James