Will mankind survive the Anthropocene?
Experts warn nuclear weapons will make the 'age of man' even more dangerous - and could wipe us out entirely
The era in which we live is now officially described as an atomic Anthropocene or the 'age of humans', an epoch defined by humans' impact on the planet – and one of its most distinctive features is radiation.
The fallout (both literal and figurative) from international nuclear weapons testing, nuclear energy and nuclear disasters are embedded in our environment, but also in our society.
And this year, they've all suddenly become rather more noticeable, confronting us with some alarming questions we never thought we'd have to answer.
Will the world continue moving towards nuclear weapon abolition, or will the nuclear powers keep up and grow their stockpiles instead?
How should the world deal with North Korea's repeated violations of the Test Ban Treaty?
And do we really understand how the nuclear age has affected the survivors of nuclear accidents?
In retrospect, 2016 was always going to bring these questions to the fore, marking as it did significant anniversaries of two of the world's worst nuclear disasters: Fukushima (five years ago) and Chernobyl (30 years ago).
While the health consequences of both incidents are still debated, their psychosocial effects and economic impact are beyond doubt.
Five years after the Fukushima accident, Japan is still working to decontaminate the affected area.
It's cost five trillion yen (about £35 billion) so far and demanded the labour of 26,000 clean-up workers – many of them vulnerable to exploitation and social exclusion.
There are 100,000 of these 'nuclear refugees' still displaced; two thirds have reportedly given up hope of ever returning.
We also saw the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, which continues to effect a wide swathe of Ukraine and Belarus.
Dealing with the consequences of the disaster consumes around 6% of Ukraine's national budget, and 2.15m Ukrainians still live on territory that's officially considered contaminated.
Around 350,000 people were forcibly evacuated from the Chernobyl region, but some refugees illicitly returned.
2016 also marked the 20th anniversary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), an international agreement to end the era of nuclear weapons testing and help bring the Cold War to a close.
There has been a shift in attitude towards the abolition of nuclear weapons this year; a UN referendum on nuclear disarmament on October 27 saw 128 nations vote to ban nuclear weapons altogether.
But the motion was opposed by the UN's nine nuclear states, including the US, Russia, and the UK.
But at the same time, the British government at last moved to protect the well-being of its nuclear test veterans, providing funding for pioneering research into the inter- generational effects of nuclear weapons testing.
2016 also saw global nuclear policy openly violated by North Korea, which defied the CTBT to further its nuclear proliferation programme with tests in January and September.