It’s a scourge we’ve brought on ourselves.
We don’t necessarily think of it as a scourge, because we’ve “domesticated” it to a point, used it to generate electricity for our toasters and phone chargers. And we’ve been fortunate enough to keep the crazy animals at bay, or they’ve had the good sense themselves, at least to this point, to refrain from releasing missiles with warheads sent to wreak havoc and destruction and a heinous, terrible, endlessly hellish aftermath.
I said none of that the way I wanted to, but ever since starting Midnight In Chernobyl, I have a growing disdain for anyone who wields the use of nuclear weapons as leverage or threat. They can’t, must not, be serious. To even entertain that notion is a bridge too far.
It seems unlikely that such a force could be employed in a “strategic” or limited way. Once unleashed, large swaths of the world would be rendered uninhabitable, with billions destined for annihilation, or at least a slow descent into physical decay, succumbing to ARS, acute radiation syndrome. No need to go into detail regarding what happens to a person suffering from ARS– dare to look at pictures and data, post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or the disaster at Unit 4 at the Chernobyl power station.
My beef is with the person or persons who are empty or angry or vile enough to think nuclear war is an option that could ever be put on the table. All countries who currently have nuclear capabilities should disarm and render harmless every weapon they have, regardless of how upset they’d be over such a steep financial investment being rendered all for naught.
I guess it’s too easy to say that we never should have gone there, but we know now that we must never consider going there again, if we know what’s good for us.
If we can never rise above the penchant for expanding borders and forcing our will on unwilling populations, then we owe it to each other to at least find more conventional ways to wipe “civilization” off the map.
3 Cents' 