Nobel Peace Prize winner: Nuclear war ‘may be one tiny tantrum away’

A winner of one of this year’s Nobel Peace Prizes warned Sunday that a “moment of panic” could lead to nuclear war and mass destruction.

“We have a choice: the end of nuclear weapons, or the end of us,” said Beatrice Fihn, executive director of Ican, during her acceptance speech.

“The deaths of millions may be one tiny tantrum away,” she added, according to the BBC. 

Ican, a group formed in 2007 to highlight the humanitarian risk of nuclear weapons, received this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday. The award comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and North Korea over the latter’s development of nuclear weapons. 

Watch the very moment Beatrice Fihn and Setsuko Thurlow from @nuclearban (ICAN) accept the Nobel Peace Prize diploma and medal. Congratulations ICAN! pic.twitter.com/5V9fmReqrV

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 10, 2017

{mosads}Fihn said a moment of panic could lead to the “destruction of cities and the deaths of millions of civilians” at the hands of nuclear weapons. She added that the risk of nuclear warfare was greater today than during the Cold War.

Pyongyang launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile last month, ending a two-month hiatus for missile launches from the country. 

The missile is said to have traveled nearly 2,800 miles high and for a distance of more than 600 miles. North Korea claimed the missile, called a Hwasong-15, is capable of reaching the entire U.S. mainland.