A budding nuclear threat, from more than just the usual suspects

Over the summer of 2017, as President Trump was promising “fire and fury” in response to North Korea’s provocations and a nuclear confrontation seemed closer than it had in decades, a funny thing was happening in American backyards. Personal bomb shelters, all the rage at the height of U.S.-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1960s and ’70s, were suddenly once again a hot item – perhaps as some Americans recalled the frequent photos of mushroom clouds and nuclear-blast drills in the classrooms of their youth. 

Since then Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has mellowed as Kim Jong Un has gone from being public enemy No. 1 to occasional summit buddy. After two meetings between the two leaders, a nuclear conflagration initiated by Pyongyang seems less of an imminent threat – even though the most recent parley, in Vietnam in late February, ended in an impasse over Mr. Kim’s nuclear arsenal.

As a consequence, the spike in interest in backyard bunkers to protect from nuclear fallout has abated.

Yet despite the pacifying of still-complicated relations between the United States and North Korea, some Americans might find their interest in fallout shelters rekindled. As the U.S. and Russia back away from the Cold War arms control regime that banned some weapons systems and reduced their nuclear stockpiles, a new arms race threatens on the horizon. And this time, it wouldn’t just be the two largest nuclear powers, but would likely extend to China and other lesser nuclear powers – and perhaps to some new members drawn into the nuclear club.

The recent flare-up of tensions between India and Pakistan has served as a reminder that even conflicts between regional rivals can pose a global threat when the antagonists possess nuclear weapons. A growing alarm has spread across Asia as an increasingly assertive China expands its nuclear arsenal and deploys missiles around its periphery at a pace