Those were the two options presented by a junior NSA analyst to the President of the United States of America, when faced with the nuclear obliteration of Chicago by a rogue missile.
Before we all jump to conclusion, lend me your ears, my friends.
If ever the specter of atomic war becomes more than just that, and cities start going up in flames, the World won’t come to an end.
No.
The world as we know it, with all the good and bad, will come to an end.
Lots of people will perish. Not all, not even half of us will be called to God. But lots will be taken away. Cities will vanish. Skies will darken. Plants will wither and die for lack of sunshine. Animals will die too, for lack of grass and the biomass of Earth will suffer, but not entirely perish.
However within 20 years, the planet will be almost back to what it was on the day before Day 0. Within 50 years, humanity will be back to mid-20th century conditions. Within one century, it will be as if no major nuclear war had actually happened. Scars will still be present, and children will be taught about Day 0, when War destroyed the ante-bellum way of life. But within seven generations, all the detritus, physical, material, and mental of the most destructive man-made event will be completely gone.
Nuclear war is not a joke. It is a reminder of the one and only thing we humans are better than any other creature on Earth, and possibly within the Universe. We are phenomenally adept at killing one another. We are master of destruction, knights of mayhem, virtuosi of annihilation.
We are even better, deadlier that is, than microbes, viruses, and bacteria. They exist and they do kill us. But we bested them, defeated them at their own game, and guess what, folks, we appropriated them, enlisting them in our militaries’ arsenals.
Think about that for a second: bacteria used to kill us by the hundreds of million and they are now bottled up in BioPreparat and Fort Meade secure lab containers. They can still get out and kill a bunch of us, but there’s more of us, and we are better equipped to face them off than ever before. Besides, we have natural immunity. That is a portion of the population is always immune to anything Nature can and will throw at us.
We are mean motherfuckers. And we know it, eh.
If we ever encounter an alien civilization, I pity them fools. Because one breath from us, and the Angel of Death will do the rest. R.I.P. alien civilization.
Anyhow, at this point you are wondering about what prompted me to write this post. I am coming to that directly.
I recently watched another Netflix piece of Bovis stercus propaganda, ominously called A House of Dynamite. As if poor Nobel had anything to do with the way we chose to use his invention. The man’s estate funded a peace prize that bears his name and still the sycophants belittle his legacy. The Swede did more for humanity’s good side with his products than his detractors are willing to recognize. All the millions upon millions of civil engineering projects that changed the planet and our lives for the better, were made possible by his blasting products.
No matter.
Back to our moutons. The show is all about fear mongering and also making POTUS look like a maniac. At this point we might just go and say it, Netflix is trying to make Trump look bad again, by proxy, on screen. This movie is how they are attempting to pull it off.
If you ask me, when a junior NSA analyst who looks like he is maneuvered into sexual positions by his pregnant wife, ups and tells the POTUS that he has no options to respond to an unidentified rogue nuclear missile about to hit Chicago, when he tells the “most powerful man on Earth,” that he has to choose between surrendering and committing suicide, that is when you need to reexamine your Netflix subscription.
The choices, folks, are not play possum or going banzai. The choices are between destroying one target in each country that has nuclear weapons capable of reaching the continental USA, and raising the ante to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). You either pick up da phone and tell Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi, Mr. Jong Un, Mr. Zardari, and the rest nuclear tipped fists, they have 5-10 minutes to convince you beyond the shadow of a doubt they did not orchestrate or had anything to do with the attack about to take out one of your cities.
Next step
Those who fail to convince you, you give them the option of selecting one city of similar scale, each, that they are ready to part with.
And you incinerate it.
Lex tallionis
In life and in general whenever I find myself in dire straits I find the Bible to be a good guide. Therein, one finds spiritual comfort and the moral principles required for a healthy existence.
The law of retribution, also called the law of retaliation or lex talionis, was part of the Old Testament Law given to Israel through Moses. Retribution was one of the cornerstones of Israel’s penal code. The punishment was supposed to mirror the crime. The principle of lex talionis is clearly stated in Leviticus 24:19–21: “Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death.” Monetary damages are to be paid for killing an animal belonging to someone else, but, if a person is murdered, then the murderer must forfeit his life in return. Exodus 21:23–25 and Deuteronomy 19:16–21 echo the same stipulations.
If the Bible commands it, who are we to beg to differ?! Right? Right.
So, no. The options are not surrender or kill yourself by nuclear seppuku.
The options are do nothing, and invite more dastardly, rogue, hidden attacks, each costing 10 million people or more.
OR
Show the entire world that an attack on your citizens will cause all those able to pull it off, the same amount of national grief. That is why smart nations spend tens of thousands of billions of dollars on nuclear arsenals. So, that they don’t have to fight existential wars every twenty years with other contenders for supremacy.
Nuclear weapons have saved us from at least 3 if not 4 world wars since 1945.
Only victims choose to stay unarmed and hope for the best. Only stupid people continue to do so when everyone else starts packing heat.
And if one must pack heat, it better be the atomic kind. There is absolutely nothing better out there that says don’t even think to jump me, than a nuke.
If you are scared, that’s ok. It means the Russians don’t have to use it in anger. The Americans have similar devices, smaller perhaps, but powerful nonetheless, that are more precise. The Chinese added in 2024 alone, another 100 nuclear warheads to their strategic stockpile. The Indians are ramping up production, too. And if they do it, the Pakistanis cannot be far behind. And guess what, if Pakistan is building more, than Iran is trying to do the same. And no matter how many bunker busters the Americans and Israeli use, one day Iran will have it.
And guess what, if they do, the Saudi will get it too. Then the Turks. And so on and so forth.
Nuclear proliferation is the name of the game. I am not sure the world understands that living in fear is not normal. But as long as we are not willing to get off the ground and explore the galaxy, this Earth of ours is the only one we’ve got. So, living in fear is not an option.
You better start love the Bomb, like Dr. Strangelove, eh!
We sure live through interesting times, eh!
Götterdämmerung 