The nuclear arms race is heating up. Will it take another bomb to renew the push for disarmament?

The Sunday Magazine What lessons the atomic bombings of Japan hold for today's nuclear world

Eighty years after the first atomic bombs fell, experts and survivors warn that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could once again be unleashed, as the nuclear arms race heats up.

"Most experts believe that the risk of nuclear use is rising, and in some cases rising dramatically," said Joseph Cirincione, a national security analyst who has worked on nuclear non-proliferation for decades.

"The same drivers that we saw in the '50s and '60s that fuelled the arms race are now reasserting themselves … and we don't have the public pressure to counter them," he told The Sunday Magazine .

In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists updated its Doomsday Clock to read 89 seconds to midnig