For peace-lovers it was a strange and bewildering sight: people dancing and cheering in the streets of New Delhi and Islamabad because their governments had exploded an atomic bomb, politicians bragging about the nuclear capabilities of their countries, the press going wild over the achievements of their scientific institutions. Achievements? In Europe, people had lived for decades under the threat of a nuclear holocaust, they had danced and cheered when the Cold War ended. Now another threat of nuclear war, this time between two of the most populous, but also the most impoverished nations of the world? How could anybody be happy about the news of the successful nuclear tests? Wasn?t it absurd that the masses were cheering when their governments were spending the title money they had on the military and on expensive atomic gadgets instead of combatting poverty in their countries?