It sounds unthinkable but I think such a scenario exists where economic sanctions have the same effect on Russia today as they had on Japan in 1941. Japan had no choice but to attack.
So Putin can see right now there is no going back from this. The leaders of the NATO countries have all revealed they harbor a hatred of Russia to the point where they are supporting and complicit in the killing of Ukraniian civilians just so they can blame Russia for it. It is much like they have all gone completely insane. (I really do think that is entirely possible due to sars-cov-2 infection or the vaccines or both).
So if the sanctions and threats caused Putin to decide he has no choice but to take out the main protagonists today, London and Washington would cease to exist as a functioning governments. He could then send a message to the rest of NATO saying ok. We can stop right here and start over with a clean slate or you can launch a retaliatory strike in which case the Russian response to that will ensure we will all suffer the same fate. Would the rest of NATO launch that suicidal retaliatory strike or would they fold?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17940186/russia-footage-zircon-hypersonic-nuke-missile-hit-london/
That reckons back to Parsons, the JPL, shit like that. Like we can't go back to the moon because we don't have the right occultists doing "the right stuff" to rockets.
I did NOT know this...that Parsons died by dropping mercury fulminate, which was used in Breaking Bad by Walter White to explode (and escape) a gang's office. I'd be willing to bet that the inspiration for that scene came from Parsons, just due to the sheer number of occultists in Hollywood.
Actually, back to your point, I knew a Czech chemist who helped design nuclear reactors, and at a bar one night we talked about nuclear bombs, and he seemed to think they were pretty plausible. He basically thought he could build one himself. Oh, and this guy was an organic chemist when I met him...I've met almost no other chemists that did both nuclear chemistry and organic chemistry professionally.