Threat of massive destruction to world through nuclear war is still very much around; Top US General says China feared a US (nuclear) attack during last days of Donald Trump's presidency

Minor update on 30th Sep. 2021

The threat of massive destruction to the world through nuclear war is still very much around as we can see from public statements by a top US General that China feared a US (nuclear) attack during the last days of Donald Trump's presidency.

The plain and very disturbing truth is that a few persons in the world who have the command authority in 'Great Powers' countries to launch absolutely devastating nuclear weapons that their countries possess, can take the world into a massively destructive nuclear war.

In my young adult days of the 1980s, one of the realities that the media would talk about and which seeped into my thinking, my worldview, was the possibility of a nuclear war between the great powers then, the USA and the USSR, which would impact the whole world. For readers who do not know about those days: there were world peace marches and rallies then in many parts of the world. I joined one such world peace march in Brussels, Belgium sometime in 1985-86 (I was on software assignment there sent by my Mumbai software company). The end 1987 nuclear arms agreement, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty , between US president Ronald Reagan and USSR General Secretary (head of state) Mikhail Gorbachev, was a huge achievement that significantly reduced that fear in the minds of people that read up on such stuff (including me). 

The presidency of Donald Trump in USA brought back some of those nuclear war fears as he publicly talked of the big button he had with which he could create damage to North Korea (and which implied any other countries opposing USA too) that the world had never seen (or words to that effect).

But what was a surprise to me, when reports about this first emerged some weeks ago, was that China feared a (nuclear) attack from USA in the last days of Donald Trump's presidency! This brings back some of the utterly horrible fear of nuclear world war that people like me would read/view about in mainstream media in the 1980s prior to end 1987 US-USSR nuclear arms agreement.

[USA] Gen. Milley details his phone calls with Chinese counterpart, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpSrAXoiFB4 , 5 min. 36 secs., published on 28th Sept. 2021 by CNN.

In the above video, Gen. Milley says, around 45 secs. into the video, in the context of his call to his Chinese counterpart (top uniformed military leader of China): "These military to military communications at the highest level are critical to the security of the United States in order to deconflict military actions, manage crises, and prevent war between great powers that are armed with the world's most deadliest weapons."

I am glad that USA's top military general and his Chinese counterpart had phone calls that ensured that the Chinese armed forces did not do anything horrible out of fear of an imagined impending US nuclear attack. 

Bob Woodward on Milley's call to China: His whole point is that miscommunication is the seed of war, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgdez0SRB30 , 9 min. 42 secs., published by CNN on 29th Sep. 2021.