I’ve known Jeff Colvin over the past few years in his role as chair of Gettysburg DFA and as a dedicated advocate for democracy and progressive policies. Colvin works tirelessly to share his views with others and to make a difference in our community. But I only recently learned that another major part of Jeff’s identity — as a scientist — had led him to write a fascinating book describing the role that science played in changing world history.
Avoiding Apocalypse is a sweeping journey into the world of science, moving from the primitive but accurate astronomical knowledge of early Incan civilizations to high-performance computing and inertial confinement fusion at California’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, where Colvin worked for many years. Along the way, he considers the work of Galileo, building on traditions established by Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler, and later thinkers including Descartes. He highlights the scientific curiosity of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, portraying them not only as political leaders of the American Revolution but also as amateur scientists whose discoveries helped shape modern science.
Colvin is a careful and persuasive writer who creates clear narratives while packing his story with accessible scientific knowledge. As the book progresses, readers are treated to discussions of the fundamentals of electricity, the structure of the atom and quantum mechanics, ending ultimately with the recently understood state of matter called plasma, which makes our cell phones and laptop computers work, but which also makes thermonuclear weapons possible. Colvin is himself a plasma physicist who has published nearly 100 research articles.
The book’s central theme is bold but compelling: although scientists created the bombs themselves, they may well also have helped save the world from World War III through their role in arms reduction and in bringing the Cold War to a close.
After huge buildups in nuclear arsenals after World War II (at one point the US and the USSR had some 60,000 nuclear warheads between them), the two countries slowly disengaged through years of dialogue. Colvin argues that a crucial turning point came in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union cracked down on dissident scientists, most notably Andrei Sakharov — the physicist who helped design Soviet thermonuclear weapons and later became a leading advocate for arms control and human rights. Sakharov’s internal exile that followed the open expression of his beliefs symbolized a broader conflict between scientific openness and political repression, and he became an international figure.
Western scientists responded to the Soviet crackdown by boycotting meetings and publications involving Soviet researchers, applying international pressure that linked scientific cooperation to human rights. The SOS Committee (named after exiled Soviet scientists Sakharov, Orlov, and Shchasransky) effectively boycotted Soviet scientists of all fields for years.
This linkage — between arms control, scientific collaboration, and fundamental human rights — proved decisive. When Mikhail Gorbachev eventually released Sakharov amid the temporary thaw of “perestroika,” it led to initial arms-reduction agreements including START I and START II. Verification systems and monitoring methods embedded in those treaties were, fittingly, developed by scientists themselves. And scientists worked to deactivate thousands of warheads and safeguard the plutonium they contained.
Reading the book reminded me — once again — how fortunate my generation has been. As a baby boomer, I grew up under the shadow of nuclear war, aware that catastrophe was always around the corner but fortunately not yet realized. Colvin does not offer easy reassurance about the future. Pretty much every nuclear nonproliferation treaty that successfully reduced and stabilized the nuclear competition of the Cold War has now been abandoned, and the global arms-control framework that scientists helped build has weakened significantly.
We still live with the fear of World War III. Colvin’s question, implicit throughout the book, lingers at its end: can scientists save us again?
Jeff Colvin, Avoiding Apocalypse: How Science and Scientists Ended the Cold War (Chronos Books, 2023)
