Nuclear reactor and weapons accidents, radiological assassination tools and terrorists’ weapons of mass destruction, fallout from nuclear tests and even nuclear combat, hazards of medical waste. Radiation is real, but how much of the threat is dramatized or fictionalized by authors and screenplay writers, or demagogued by activists with agendas? Lecture discusses the history and the potential, and attempts to separate the facts, engineering and science from the science fiction and demagoguery. Presented by Capt. Mark McDonagh, USN/ret., a physicist with 12 years’ experience at the Naval War College, currently on the National Security Decision Making Game staff.