Why nuclear war is closer than ever: That's the chilling verdict of historian SERHII PLOKHY who reveals the FORTY countries which could blow the world apart... and the timebomb that could trigger ash-flecked annihilation ⊖⊖

I was born and have lived my entire life under the threat of universal extermination that followed that summer's day in 1945 when, in the New ­Mexico desert, the first nuclear bomb was exploded.