Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Announcement: The 2022 Future of Life Award
The winners are announced
For reducing the risk of nuclear war by developing and popularizing the science of nuclear winter
We bestow the Future of Life Award 2022 upon…
Announced on 6th August 2022 – Hiroshima Day
The 2022 Future of Life Award in the media
Discover the story of Nuclear Winter
Future of Life Institute Honours Nuclear Winter Pioneers
The Future of Life Institute (FLI) has presented John Birks, Paul Crutzen, Jeannie Peterson, Alan Robock, Carl Sagan, Georgiy Stenchikov, Brian Toon and Richard Turco with the Future of Life Award for their roles in discovering and popularising nuclear winter. We hope that drawing attention to these individuals’ work will help to refocus public discourse around nuclear weapons as governments meet to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Nuclear winter is the severe and prolonged global climatic cooling likely to result from a nuclear war. Nuclear detonations over fuel-dense areas may start violent firestorms, lofting large quantities of soot and smoke into the stratosphere. State-of-the-art climate models suggest it would envelop the planet, blocking out sunlight. There it would remain for years, chilling the planet and devastating global agriculture.
In 1982, Peterson, then an editor of Ambio, commissioned and published the first body of research investigating the environmental consequences of nuclear war. This included Crutzen’s and Birks’ groundbreaking paper “The Atmosphere after a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon”, which explained how soot lofted into the stratosphere by nuclear firestorms would block out sunlight. The paper was quickly followed by the seminal TTAPS paper, on which Turco, Toon, and Sagan were co-authors, introducing the nuclear winter hypothesis. A model produced by Soviet researchers, including Stenchikov, soon confirmed the TTAPS predictions. Turco, Toon and Sagan, along with Robock, himself a tremendously important nuclear winter researcher, also drove a public awareness campaign spanning decades.
Both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev credited the discovery of nuclear winter with helping end the Cold War nuclear arms race, thereby reducing the risk of nuclear conflict for decades. Beatrice Fihn, Nobel Laureate and Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, noted that “given the many close calls during the Cold War, by encouraging governments to pump the brakes on the nuclear arms race based on scientific knowledge about the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons use, this group of individuals might very well have saved the world by helping avert a nuclear conflict.”
Moreover, the discovery of nuclear winter drove further research into the effects of nuclear war, providing a more complete understanding of the risks. Whereas the risks were previously understood in terms of the immediate blasts and firestorms, radioactive fallout and electromagnetic pulse, it is now understood that most casualties would result from nuclear winter and its knock-on effects, such as global famine, epidemics and civil and geopolitical conflict. Such an understanding puts governments in a stronger position to mitigate those risks. This is of particular value now when, due to ongoing geopolitical tensions, the risk of a full-scale nuclear war is widely considered to be at its highest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
“The current geopolitical conflict discourse is absurdly cavalier about nuclear war risk”, said MIT physics professor Max Tegmark. “The latest nuclear winter research confirms that Reagan was right when he said that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
The award ceremony took place against the backdrop of states meeting to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the cornerstone of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime. With this in mind, Tegmark added, “in these turbulent times, the more decision-makers understand about nuclear winter, the less likely they are to make reckless decisions that may cause it.”
For interview requests or other press enquiries, please contact Georgiana Gilgallon, Director of Communications, at georgiana@futureoflife.org
Winter Is Coming?
On the 6th of August 2022, the 77th anniversary of Hiroshima, we hosted an event to explore a chilling but fascinating topic: the latest science of nuclear winter, and how to reduce this risk by improving awareness of it. We celebrated the heroes who discovered and spread the word about this shocking scientific prediction of nuclear winter: that firestorms set off by a major nuclear war would envelop the earth in soot and smoke blocking sunlight for years, sending global temperature plunging, ruining ecosystems and agriculture and killing billions through famine.
One panel discussed the most up-to-date findings about nuclear winter; the other explored the challenges involved in communicating this risk to politicians and the public, from the 1980s to today. The specter of nuclear war still hangs over us, and current geopolitics has made it as threatening as ever.
Winner profiles
Jeannie Peterson
Jeannie Peterson was the editor-in-chief of Ambio: A Journal of Environment and Society from 1978-1983. As editor, Peterson commissioned 15 investigations exploring the long-term effects of a major nuclear war waged between the U.S. and the Soviet Union using half the existing arsenal of existing bombs. One of these commissions yielded the seminal discoveries of Crutzen and Birks, and in 1982 Peterson published their breakthrough paper, ‘Twilight at Dawn’. Almost two decades later, Peterson’s work at the UN would see her serving as a peace negotiator in Bosnia-Croatia.
Paul Crutzen
Paul Crutzen (1933-2021) was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist, most well-known for his work on the formation and decomposition of atmospheric ozone, which won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995. He is also credited with popularising the term ‘Anthropocene’, which refers to the period in which human actions have a dramatic impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Along with John Birks, Crutzen wrote the famous Ambio paper: ‘The Atmosphere After Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon’, which became a catalyst for subsequent nuclear winter research and a vital breakthrough in thinking about the concept.
John Birks
John W. Birks is the co-founder and former president of 2B Technologies, where he now works as Chief Scientist, directing research and development into new miniaturized air pollution monitors. Birks is Professor Emeritus and Department Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Fellow Emeritus of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is best known for quantifying the rates of several chemical reactions key to understanding ozone depletion in the Antarctic ozone hole, and his seminal work in 1981-82 with Paul Crutzen (Nobel Laureate, 1995) in developing the theory of nuclear winter.
Richard Turco
Richard Turco is an atmospheric scientist, and professor at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles. He was lead author of the ‘TTAPS’ paper published in 1983 in Science magazine which coined the term ‘nuclear winter’ and popularized the idea. The paper reported computer simulations of strong climatic anomalies — namely deep cooling of Earth’s surface — associated with the absorption of solar radiation by smoke generated in a putative large-scale nuclear exchange. Turco was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1986.
Brian Toon
Owen Brian Toon is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, and a fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1969 he received an A.B. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley and, in 1975, a Ph.D. in physics at Cornell University under Carl Sagan. Toon focuses his research on cloud physics, atmospheric chemistry, radiative transfer, and comparing Earth with other planets. His work on the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs was pivotal to the discovery of nuclear winter; his contribution to the TTAPS paper involved applying his previous findings about the impact of volcanic dust clouds on the Martian climate. Toon is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, from whom he received the Roger Revelle Medal in 2011.
Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan (1934-1996), one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the late 20th century, was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. Amongst countless varied achievements, Sagan is perhaps best-known for his work on extraterrestrial life, narrating and co-writing (with his wife, Ann Druyan) the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and writing the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for the eponymous 1997 film. One area of work in which Sagan never received due credit was the popularisation of nuclear winter: as well as contributing to the ground-breaking ‘TTAPS’ paper, Sagan also organised two conferences in 1983, the first in Cambridge, the second in Washington D.C.; the latter culminated in a televised conversation between US and Soviet scientists speaking from Moscow.
Georgiy Stenchikov
Georgiy Stenchikov completed his Ph.D. in the Numerical and Analytical Study of Weak Plasma Turbulence at Moscow Physical Technical Institute in 1977. Afterwards, he headed a department at the Russian Academy of Sciences, which used computational analysis to carry out crucial early research into the impact of humans on Earth’s climate and environmental systems. In 1983, Stenchikov, along with his colleague Vladimir Alexandrov, used global climatic models to calculate the consequences of nuclear war. These efforts helped to support findings in the United States and influence political leadership in the Soviet Union to work on arms control. Since the end of the Cold War, Stenchikov has continued using climatic models to understand the consequences of nuclear war.
Alan Robock
Alan Robock is a Distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. Robock has made significant contributions to our understanding of the environmental and humanitarian consequences of regional and global nuclear war. His areas of expertise include climate intervention (also called geoengineering), and the climatic effects of nuclear war and volcanic eruptions. Robock was a lead author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is now Associate Editor of Reviews of Geophysics, the most highly-cited journal in the Earth Sciences, a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the AMS Jule Charney Medal.
Celebrating the unsung heroes of our time
The Future of Life Award is a $50,000/person prize given to individuals who, without having received much recognition at the time, have helped make today dramatically better than it may otherwise have been. The award is funded by Skype-cofounder Jaan Tallinn and presented by us, the Future of Life Institute. To nominate an unsung hero, please follow the link here.
Meet the award-winners from previous years
This video tells the stories of our previous winners, and explores what it means to be a hero. Our past winners are those individuals who, finding themselves at major crossroads for humanity, chose to act in the interests of all life on earth, and all life to come. They carried the torch to light the way ahead.
Past Winners
View the winners of the Future of Life Award from previous years
2021
Joseph Farman, Susan Solomon and Stephen Andersen
On 16 September 1987, humanity took its first step towards saving the ozone layer, and thereby avoiding a climate catastrophe, by signing the Montreal Protocol. The 2021 Future of Life Award goes to Stephen Andersen, Susan Solomon, and the late Joseph Farman for their critical contributions to the most successful international environmental treaty to date.
The 2021 Future of Life Award was covered in Vox.
2020
William Foege & Viktor Zhdanov
Dr. William Foege and Dr. Viktor Zhranov made critical contributions to the eradication of a virus that killed 30% of those it infected: Smallpox. It was the first time in human history that we completely eliminated a human disease. This has saved over 200 million lives – and counting – since 1979.
The 2020 Future of Life Award was covered in Axios.
2019
Matthew Meselson
Dr. Meselson was a driving force behind the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which averted an arms race in bioweapons and ensured that biology remains associated with curing rather than killing people. Meselson’s long career is studded with highlights: Proving Watson and Crick’s DNA structure hypothesis, solving the Sverdlovsk Anthrax mystery, and ending the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But it is above all his work on biological weapons that makes him an international hero.
The 2019 Future of Life Award to Dr. Matthew Meselson was covered in Vox.
2018
Stanislav Petrov
One of the closest calls to nuclear war occurred on September 26, 1983, when Stanislav Petrov chose to ignore the Soviet early-warning detection system that had erroneously indicated five incoming American nuclear missiles. With his decision to ignore algorithms and instead follow his gut instinct, Petrov helped prevent an all-out US-Russian nuclear war, as detailed in the documentary film “The Man Who Saved the World”.
The 2018 Future of Life Award to Stanislav Petrov was covered in Vox, Daily Mail, and The Daily Star.
2017
Vasili Arkhipov
Vasili Arkhipov single-handedly prevented nuclear war during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Arkhipov’s submarine captain, thinking their sub was under attack by American forces, wanted to launch a nuclear weapon at the US warships above. Arkhipov, with the power of veto, said no, thus averting nuclear war.
The 2017 Future of Life Award to Vasili Arkhipov was covered in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Atlantic.
Help us find our next Unsung Hero
If you want to nominate someone for the Future of Life Award, please use the link below to access the registration page. Once registered, you will be able to submit your nomination with supporting links and documentation.
If we decide to give the award to your nominee, you will receive a $3,000 prize from FLI for your contribution!
If you are a researcher who would like to apply for a grant to research a candidate, please email david.nicholson@futureoflife.org.
If you don’t know of any candidates, we encourage you to share this page on social media and websites like Reddit, so we can reach as many people as possible in our quest to find humanity’s unsung heroes. If, by sharing this, you directly lead someone else to submit a winning candidate, we will give you credit in the nominations page.
Featured Content
Sign Up for our Newsletter
Follow Us
