ABSTRACT
Modeling and simulation help to picture futures. This chapter introduces several simulations that picture, explore, and display uncertainties relevant to nuclear arms control and denuclearization. The US government has adopted simulation as a heuristic and training device in high-profile security contexts, more elaborately than any other use of simulation. The chapter illustrates how elaborate simulations can be by reproducing descriptions intended for the military and those who fund its work. Zero nuclear weapon-responsible forces would take on two other missions: first, to ensure the physical security of denuclearization, including controls on fissile material; and, second, during and after the transition period, to perform verification and assurance work. When people construct a model or design a simulation, they build into its initial state their assumed understanding of the problem. The power of a simulation or a model lies in its selectivity, its centering on just a few elements of the world it mimics.
