Let's get a bunker
Shop 'til the bombs drop!
The city of sunshine I live in
The city of sunshine I live in is home to Raytheon, a globally significant weapons manufacturer that makes the very large armaments Trump is presently throwing at Iran like a deranged ball pitching machine.
My Old Pueblo was a target during the cold war.
Being the Air Force brat son of a Master Sergeant who loved Walter Cronkite, the Sunday papers, FDR and JFK I was force fed geography and because he had no clue about what’s appropriate for kids, I heard the grisly details from pop, the strategic air command, peace is our profession man, about what happens when an unimaginably huge atomic fireball, a miniature sun, blows over our swamp box cooler.
Oh, It’ll definitely take out the TV antennae on the roof. And the rabbit ears on the Magnavox.
No way, pop.
Yep.
My goldfish and mom’s canary and Leo our cat?
Yep. And billions of human beings. Every living thing except cockroaches.
What would happen if Russia hit us with one, pop?
Flash of light. You’re gone. Everyone. In an instant.
Hm.
Good night, son. Sleep well.
Night, dad. Hey, dad.
Yep.
What about those who survive?
You want to live to see your skin fall off your bones?
No, pop. Question, pop.
If I was rich and bought the moon could I blow up a nuclear bomb on the surface of the moon because I wanted to see what it would look like?
Good night, son.
Night, dad.
I’d fall asleep looking up through the white asbestos ceiling at my imaginary stars wondering if the ICBMs would look like shooting stars crisscrossing the night sky.
And that was 1962. By 1968 the B-52s were gone. Now it was cross country flights carrying the war dead from the Vietnam Mistake home to Dover Air Field were crossing the night sky above my sleepless teenage head.
Would my brothers come home safe?
When I was a stingray bike riding freckle faced kid getting sunburned daily here there were thirteen missile silos ringing my desert city aimed at only the Department of Defense knew where. Each very tall Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile wore a nuclear warhead dunce cap packed with multiple warheads. When a friend explained “ballistic” meant it was shot up and out like a bullet with a predestined arc and target that could not be reversed once unleashed I thought of how my mom could go ballistic just like that.
Mutually assured carnage. With a bullet that cannot be recalled or redirected.
Dad never pissed her off.
At six I rose each dawn to the distant rooster roar of the B-52’s massive jet engines crowing their power whirring and warming and rocketing down the tarmac one after the next. Some mornings I’d waddle on my knees to the edge of my bed to watch the giant things in the distance through my venetian blinds as they lumbered across the horizon away from rising sun turning the east blue and peach.
The nuclear flock making their endless daily test runs and every Saturday, midday, the air raid sirens would be tested and I was that kid under his desk giggling at the possibility of my desert home being vaporized and the sand turning to molten glass and how dumb it was to think you’d survive it.
Thanks, air raid siren!
You’re welcome, young citizen. Remember to duck and cover.
You know how pointless that is?
Uh, well…
I don’t want to survive anyway. Do you really want to hang out with the kind of people you know who have bunkers? Prepper families creep me out.
After a few nuclear winters you could warm up to them. Take it from your friendly air raid siren, one of them might help one of your future three-armed irradiated sister wives deliver your tragic alien rape mutant child someday.
Thanks, air raid siren.
I remember drawing atomic bomb blasts with lots of looping crayola curls with stick figure bad guys flying over tanks rocketing at each other.
The little girl sitting next to me was Nancy Cacciopo. She was a dark haired girl who wore a black eye patch which made her an exotic 7-year to this distracted doodler and she was drawing a beautiful unicorn with butterflies fluttering all over her pastel blue clouds when she looked at me. I am 70 and I can still clearly remember her sniff, her eye-rolling disgust when she glanced at my violent cartooning content. Tanks. Knives. Bows and arrows. Gore. Eyeballs. Guts. Rockets. Bombs.You know. Cool stuff. Boy stuff.
Manly stuff.
The War between the “Religious” Primates
Takes roughly half an hour for an ICBM to get here. Depends on the traffic. Could be congested up there. Once one goes up they all go up and hellzapoppin.
I’m unnerved about this cork actually popping. Not since ‘45.
Should be quick. In this war the kerosene of religion is being splashed and flung about by ego-maniacal flamethrowers who are not the best and brightest of our bipedal species. Are we to be led into nuclear winter by forearm wagging primates scratching the ground and thumping their chests, our faux civilization destroyed because one of the superstitious apes among the pack howling and barking “Armageddon” and “Allah” at each other finally did it.
Odds are it will be our orange orangutan who does it.
Here out west and often downwind…
Here at our southwestern “ground zero” I expect to be instantaneously pulverized into charcoal dust, blown away in the atomic windstorm caused by the massive shock wave, or-even cooler- my “human dust particles” would get sucked up into the intense roiling updrafts building the billowing mushroom cloud’s stem that will stretch high into the sky over the remains of the site where humans lived for 10,000 years. I’ll be rising up to the heavens along with millions of you. Thanks for the radioactive rapture, chimps. Hope you all found your Valhalla. May you drown in the blood of the dead.
I guess the drawing I made in school will be fairly accurate. I hope in these final days Nancy is riding a unicorn to work where maybe she’s a biologist working to save endangered butterflies.
In every war mistakes are made. Every war. We made our fatal mistake long before this war even began by electing a foolish incompetent individual to lead us.
Such fools.
Alien tours will tour
Alien tours will tour at the speed of light past our toasted and roasted orb and the space tour guide will describe us to their sightseeing passengers as “The Planet of the Fools” and chuckling, the guide will start his rollicking story of “The Superstitious Primates”.
“Unbelievable! How could any species be so advanced and yet so stupid!”
“How could they let themselves be destroyed by such a leader?’
Out of one of his three mouths the alien tour guide will smirk and say, “He was entertaining.”
I tried to listen to our so-called Secretary of War tonight on 60 Minutes. I had to turn it off because it was like listening to a teenager giving a book report on a book he'd never read, giving us the Cliff Notes version of what going to war is like. All the while he was smirking, as if the reporter was stupid. Sadly, I think your childhood vision is closer to being our adult nightmare.
Here's the REALLY scary crap when we are led by a man with dementia surrounded by adolescent sycophants:
"The President, however, does NOT need the concurrence of either his military leaders or the U.S. Congress to order the launch of nuclear weapons. Neither the military nor Congress can overrule these orders. As former STRATCOM Commander General Robert Kehler has written, members of the military are bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice "to follow orders provided they are legal and have come from competent authority." But questions about the legality of the order—whether it is consistent with the requirements, under the laws of armed conflict (LOAC), for necessity, proportionality, and distinction—are more likely to lead to consultations and CHANGES in the President's order than to a REFUSAL by the military to execute the order.
Another scenario could see the United States choose to use nuclear weapons prior to a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies, on a time line that did not reflect an imminent nuclear attack against the United States. The United States maintains calculated ambiguity and has never declared a "no first use" policy, and the President could order the first use of nuclear weapons. As discussed above, his military leaders may seek to adjust his orders to meet the laws of armed conflict, but there is, otherwise, no legal barrier to first use.
If the President did choose to (order)... a nuclear attack, he would identify himself to military officials at the Pentagon with codes unique to him. These codes are reportedly recorded on an ID card, known as the "biscuit," that the President carries at all times. Once identified, he would transmit the launch order to the Pentagon and STRATCOM. STRATCOM would then implement the order by preparing to launch the weapons needed for the selected option."
We--and the world-- Are. So. Screwed.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10521