The Conditions of Collective Suicide and the Threat of Nuclear War (IN: Suicide: Understanding and Responding: Harvard Medical School Perspectives, ed. by D Jacobs and H N Brown)

Discusses the threat of nuclear self-destruction as an outgrowth of humankind’s group life, setting out 5 conditions leading to mass suicide. Suggests that these conditions, which include national communities of potential victims who seem helpless to redirect their leaders; polarized ideological positions used to justify a holocaust; terror of surviving a fate worse than death; & advanced technology enabling leaders to easily carry out mass destruction, seem now to be present for mankind. (LH)