Nuclear-armed Pakistan should jar us awake. But Pakistan in crisis is just one of the potential horrors yoked to nuclear proliferation.

Where are the media on this crucial issue? To whom do we listen in confusing times? What credible voices speak unvarnished truth concerning our gravest threats? To grasp the essentials, scan The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

University of Chicago physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project founded The Bulletin in 1947. Their "Doomsday Clock" dramatizes how close our species is to self-destruction. In February the Board of Advisers moved the big hand of the clock forward by two minutes, to five minutes to midnight, the closest to Doomsday the big hand has come since the height of the Arms Race in the mid-eighties.

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According to the Board, which includes 18 Noble laureates, we seem unwilling to face two threatening catastrophes--nuclear war and climate change. For reasons that should be obvious, the effects of these two perils intertwine like strands of DNA.

Despite limited progress toward dismantlement on the part of the Americans and Russians, some 26,000 armed nukes remain, roughly 19,000 in our arsenal, 6,000 in Russia's, and another 1,000 split unevenly between France, Britain, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Thousands of the Russian and American bombs are armed and aimed. Many remain on high alert, vulnerable to accident or insanity.

In addition to the on-going threat posed by additional proliferation, an accidental launch, or the theft of fissile materials: National borders have become more porous, new technologies more sophisticated and terrorism more ubiquitous. Moreover, because of poverty, fanaticism and the competition for rapidly deteriorating global resources, the world is becoming an increasingly dangerous place.

American actions, too, have increased the potential for catastrophe. Not only have we enacted a policy of pre-emptive and unilateral war, we have also adopted a nuclear strategy of pre-emptive and unilateral First Strike. At the same time we have displayed increasing arrogance toward the world community and its halting attempts toward international cooperation. Blinded by our own arrogant hubris, we Americans refuse to see that we are part of the problem.

The Bulletin not only spells out in detail the specific threats facing us. It also spells out precisely what is required to reduce each threat. As Stephen Hawking said in the Board's statement: We must help the world to understand the probable consequences "if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

In future contributions to RRR, I will amplify my comments on several of the premises stated above. In the meantime, to more fully understand an issue about which most Americans remain in steadfast denial, please check out www.thebulletin.org. As is the case with other major issues confronting America and the rest of the planet, we must learn to think--and act--in new ways.