Russia’s nuclear threats, and warnings of potential nuclear war growing out of the Ukraine invasion, make for great headlines – but how much substance actually sits behind those threats?Nothing triggers fear quite like the prospect of a world ending nuclear exchange, but that doesn’t make the hype true. While we can’t relax entirely (the risk isn’t zero), I think we can afford to stop hyping the risk of WWIII quite so much, at least for now. So if you’d like some reverse clickbait where I explain why you probably shouldn’t be that afraid, let’s get into it.In this video, I take a look at what Russia’s been doing that has caused so much concern around the world, both in terms of demonstrating new weapons and issuing warnings and threats. Then I dive into Russian doctrine around nuclear weapons use, as well as the reality of the nuclear taboo, in order to determine how great the actual threat of Russian nuclear weapon use is. Finally, I talk a bit about what other nations can do if they’re determined to avoid any breach of the nuclear taboo, and keep Russian warheads locked up in their storage bunkers where they belong. A caveat as always that I am not a nuclear strategist by trade, but there are a number of good talks and articles out there if you would like to know more. I come at this from the perspective of someone who has studied and written on cold war era.I rely on a number of documents in this piece, a few key ones are listed below: US 2018 Nuclear Posture Reviewhttps://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02…The Russian Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence – a number of sites host English translationsI found “Nuclear Signalling Between NATO and Russia” by Rear Admiral John Gower, former Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Nuclear & Chemical, Biological) to be an easy read among the papers I looked at preparing for this presentation – though admittedly his work predates the 2020 basic principles. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resr…