Violence and the gospel: the teachings of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon

A United Nations study estimates that the direct effects of an all-out nuclear exchange-the initial blasts, the consequent radiation, and the ensuing fires-would kill 1.1 billion people.1 Beyond those direct effects, indirect, radiation-related effects would create an unprecedented pandemic that would kill another billion people.2 As though such a human toll were insufficient evidence of the perverseness of modern weaponry, recent studies on the long-term atmospheric and biological consequences of nuclear war raise the spectre of a "nuclear winter" that would devastate the earth, perhaps to the point of the extinction of all life.3