Still, on a good day, the danger of nuclear and chemical weapons seems manageable. The same cannot be said of biological weapons. While the danger of nuclear or chemical weapons is actually increasing dramatically, the threat of biological weapons is going off the charts. The belief in the efficacy of total war, which is the defining characteristic of modern war, suddenly became not just nonsensical, but very dangerous for the survival of humanity. The confusion of post-modern war led to the bloody Cold War of many limited conflicts but the fundamental contradiction that nuclear weapons reveal about war has not gone away, it has deepened.
Nuclear weapons are just a symptom of how technoscience has transformed war.
It has been a controllable system, up until now, because making nuclear weapons is a fantastically difficult and complex enterprise. There must be mining and refining of rare material, the production of delicate machined parts of explosives and radioactive metals, and then the incredibly careful assembly and calibration of the gadget. Because of this, only nation states have the resources to make an effective nuclear weapon. Until such a state uses one, or until a non-state terrorist buys or steals one, the most likely use of a nuclear weapon would be a dirty bomb without much explosive potential. Still, unless international politics changes fundamentally, eventually nuclear weapons will be used.