Nuclear Weapons in Dormancy

Nuclear Weapons in Dormancy is the perilous condition of the Children of the Nuke: nuclear weapons that survived the world’s earlier destruction and remain asleep underground. They are not merely relics of an extinct age. The Cube of Natho may bind the Nuke to a summoning contract, and the seal associated with it may be what keeps these weapons from being triggered without the proper ritual. Their dormancy is therefore both a reprieve and a vulnerability: the arsenal is quiet, but its survival leaves open the possibility that someone could wake it.

Scale and Survival

The threat is established through a report recalled by Mordiggian. Nuclear weapons were much rarer than guns, he explained, but far more devastating: the report estimated that four hundred could wipe out humanity. More than twelve thousand existed before Lord Kou’s ascension. That figure describes the world’s earlier stockpile, not a confirmed count of weapons still intact in the present; Mordiggian could only suspect that many had survived underground. Some might have rusted or been destroyed, but he warned that they were not all gone.

Their survival matters in a world already marked by annihilation. Fifty years after the Spiral Dancer’s ascension and forty-five after Sky-Biter unmade the world, Yuan has grown up amid the consequences of world-ending powers. The possibility of another catastrophe is not an abstract fear detached from the setting’s history. Yet Mordiggian does not claim that every surviving weapon could still function, or that their simultaneous detonation would certainly end all life. The uncertain condition of the arsenal is part of the danger: its reach is difficult to measure precisely, while even a limited surviving stock could make the world less safe.

The Seal and the Cube of Natho

Mordiggian links the sleeping weapons to the Cube of Natho and to a plan developed by NATO’s leadership. He reasons that the cube was probably designed to partially bind the Nuke to a summoning contract. Whoever controlled the artifact might then gain partial control over its prisoner, rather than possessing unrestricted command over every weapon. This is Mordiggian’s explanation of the artifact’s intended function, not a demonstrated account of exactly how the contract operates.

The proposed control has two possible military uses. A holder might force the Nuke to neutralize hostile nuclear weapons, or to sabotage an enemy’s arsenal. The seal, Mordiggian suspects, is also why the weapons continue to sleep underground: others cannot trigger them without the proper ritual. Thus the Cube of Natho is not simply associated with a powerful entity; it may mediate access to the dormant arsenal, giving control of the artifact strategic importance beyond its immediate supernatural function.

The scheme echoes Yuan’s earlier understanding of the Gun’s influence. Mordiggian explains that demigods need not be physically present to influence the weapons that sustain their violent existence. NATO’s leaders apparently reasoned that if the Gun could empower people through bullets it had not fired itself, then the Nuke might likewise be able to rear its children. The weapons’ dormancy is consequently bound up with a larger question of agency: whether a power associated with a weapon can act through other weapons, and whether a human authority can redirect that power by controlling a binding object.

A Prize for Warlords

The same potential that might let the Cube of Natho restrain the arsenal makes it an instrument of domination. Yuan recognizes why Yinyang Khan would seek it: control over the sleeping Children of the Nuke could make him the most powerful warlord in the Unmade World. Nuclear weapons capable of destroying cities could eliminate his enemies and cow everyone else into obedience. The Khan’s objective, as Yuan understands it, is not simply to awaken the arsenal for its own sake; the weapons could establish an overwhelming advantage over the political landscape around him.

That prospect turns dormancy into a contest over who may control the conditions of awakening. The weapons’ inability to be triggered without the proper ritual offers a barrier, not a guarantee of safety. If the artifact could partially control the Nuke, the same arrangement might be used to prevent an attack, interfere with an enemy’s weapons, or secure a ruler’s coercive advantage. The evidence presents these as possible functions and ambitions, not as powers Yuan or the Khan has already demonstrated. What is clear is that possession of the cube could change the balance of power even before any weapon detonated.

Catastrophe and Uncertainty

When Yuan asks what would happen if the weapons woke and detonated all at once, Mordiggian refuses certainty. The Children of the Nuke might bathe the wasteland in searing light, leaving the strongest cultivators and spirits to inherit an irradiated grave. Life might endure and recover—or it might not. Time, the seven ascendancies, and constant battles could have destroyed enough bombs that any damage would remain localized. Mordiggian cannot determine which outcome is most likely; he can only warn that the Nuke would make the world much less safe.

That uncertainty distinguishes the dormant arsenal from a catastrophe already in progress. Its possible consequences range from localized devastation to the destruction of humanity, and the surviving number and condition of the weapons remain unknown. Yuan takes the warning seriously because the world has already ended once, but the possibility of another ending remains a possibility rather than a foretold event. The arsenal’s quiet therefore sustains dread without resolving it into a precise prediction.

The Competing Promises of Salvation

The Cube of Natho also exposes a conflict over what salvation means. Manhattan had claimed that the cube could bring salvation to all. After hearing Mordiggian’s account, Yuan imagines what the nuclear cultivator might see in the endless desert: a broken, flawed world for which nuclear power could appear to offer a solution. The narrative sets that promise against the consequences that Mordiggian can describe—searing light, radioactive ruin, and survival reserved perhaps for the strongest.

Nuclear Weapons in Dormancy is therefore a state sustained by restraint, a seal, and uncertainty rather than by proof that the danger has vanished. The buried weapons connect an old military project to present ambitions, while their potential use turns a claim of universal rescue into a question of who gets to wield catastrophic force and who would be left to survive it. Their silence postpones that question; it does not answer it.