Person with eyes open
Still from film by Smriti Keshari

September 19 – October 25, 2024

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Program on Science & Global Security (SGS), part of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, this special exhibition at the Bernstein Gallery confronts the existence and threat of nuclear weapons. It marks the first stop of a national university tour of the bomb, a multimedia installation by Smriti Keshari and Eric Schlosser (’81).

Unfolding across forty-five screens, the bomb immerses viewers in the story of nuclear weapons, from the first nuclear test and subsequent use against Japan by the United States in 1945, to today’s arms race. It illuminates the thousands of nuclear weapons––held only by nine states––on land, underground, and at sea, many ready for launch. Though largely hidden from view, these weapons pose an ever-present existential threat to humanity.

Inspired by nuclear weapon command-and-control centers, the bomb’s design evokes the technological fallibility of such systems, the devastating consequences of errors and malfunctions, and the inherent impossibility of ever fully controlling these machines.

The exhibition also includes two short films produced by and for SGS:

Plan A is a simulation of escalating war between the United States and Russia. Using realistic nuclear force postures, war plans, targets, and fatality estimates based on data sets of nuclear weapons currently deployed and weapon yields, the work shows the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical to strategic to city-destruction phases.

We Must Speak Boldly – Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction is a reflection on current nuclear dangers and a call from scientists for more education and collective action to help address them. The Coalition was founded at SGS in 2019 and works for fulfillment of the long-standing international obligation to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Eight infographic panels by SGS are also on view. Installed along the gallery walls, they provide up-to-date information on the risks of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials, the local and global long-term effects of nuclear weapon use, the US nuclear weapons modernization plan and its expected costs, and current disarmament efforts, including the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.