ABSTRACT
The deployment of nuclear weaponry and preparation for nuclear war have not only altered geopolitics at the regional and global scale, but have transformed our social institutions and changed our perceptions of the global environment and our future existence in it. The geographical effects of this transformation are increasingly apparent and provide a focus for a burgeoning new topical area within the discipline. The overall theoretical basis for geographical enquiry into nuclear war and peace is vague. Thus the ‘problem’ becomes one of definition: political geographers look for political and spatial theories to explain international conflicts and non-nuclear war behaviour; natural hazards researchers apply known and familiar concepts to a new hazard, nuclear war; economic geographers examine the differential impacts of military spending on regional economies. This fragmentation results in little cross-fertilization of ideas from geo graphic subfield to subfield, limited explanations of the geographical effects of nuclear war and peace, and little influence on the scientific and policy debates on nuclear war and its ultimate consequences.
