I'm going to hazard a guess that nuclear weapons will be used in the second half of this century, with usage more likely in the last quarter as the calendar gets closer to 2100.
The reason is that by then, everyone with first-hand knowledge of what it was like to be nuked will be dead, as will everyone who has ever seen an above-ground nuclear test. Even with the increasing databases, memories will fade. And some asswipe will order them used.
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Possibly. Nukes are the "status weapon" of emerging tin-pot ( Pu-pot? ) dictatorships. But the industrial and technical effort needed to mass-produce these gadgets makes it a low-volume threat, not a world ender like the cold war we barely survived. This is not a comfort if one were to find oneself at ground zero, but it's something.
To me, far more dangerous and likely threats are biological. These don't require metallurgical and chemical wizardry, "just" genetic fiddling and a petri dish farm. And if one gets loose .... watch out.
The scariest movie I've ever seen is "12 Monkeys".
Maybe nukes will be our salvation, as we have to sterilize a doomsday infection by "nuking it from orbit". ( Dark humor is still humor, right? )
Both the Americans and the Soviets had robust and secure command-and-control systems in place to ensure that nuclear weapons were only used on the orders of the respective national command authorities.
I am not confident at all, as nuclear weapons continue to proliferate, that other nations will be as diligent.
I can't argue with your conclusions, Comrade E.B. My articles about Hiroshima and Harry Patch mention the importance of direct experience, too. As a society, we have become less familiar with just how awful an all-out war can be, as have most other countries of any size. If our experience with the banking crisis, another thing that has happened numerous times in the past for the same reasons is any indication, we're in for a repeat performance.
I just hope that by then more of us will have wised up.
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