When the cold war waned, both the U.S. and the Soviets began to denuclearise, treaties were signed, etc. tensions were deescalating (if you search for a graph for no. of nuclear weapons over the years, you see a peak during the cold war then a gradual decrease)

Now, everyone is afraid that nuclear war could be coming soon, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Trump's America kidnapping Maduro in Venezuela and bombing Iran with Israel, not to mention his threats against several other nation's sovereignty (many of which are NATO members), Israel's starvation of Gaza, conflict between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are having conflict too, the world is a mess, made worse that all conflicts I mentioned above involve nuclear armed states and could have additional nuclear armed states intervene in.