By the mid-1950s, policy-makers in the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain—the three nuclear powers—feared that an unconstrained nuclear arms race might lead to disaster. In October 1958, the three nations began talks on a comprehensive test ban treaty, an on-again, off-again negotiation that continues to the present day. When the test-ban talks began, Viktor Adamskii was a 35-year-old theoretical physicist at Arzamas-16, a key Soviet nuclear weapons laboratory. In the following essay, Adamskii, who still works at the laboratory, relates how he and his colleagues—deeply concerned about the medical dangers of radioactive fallout—attempted to influence Soviet policy-makers to accept an agreement that would bar all tests except those conducted underground. A Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963.
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