red dawn ruined my breakfust

It’s so odd to fear Nu­clear War again. The whole event played-out like a scene from a Jer­ry Bruck­heimer film.

Scene: INT. Cof­fee Shop —
Morn­ing, the Amer­i­can flag rus­tles in the pe­riph­ery. Light con­ver­sa­tion and sil­ver­ware clinks fill the am­biance. A young man looks up from his morn­ing pa­per, the head­line reads,

In Trump’s North Ko­rea warn­ings,
his mil­i­tary school class­mates hear echoes of the 1962 Cuban mis­sile cri­sis.
— Wash­ing­ton Post 9 Au­gust 2017

WAIT­RESS
Re­fill?

YOUNG MAN
Yes …

He scans the tele­vi­sion be­hind her and sees the North Ko­re­an flag amongst a pa­rade of nu­clear ar­ma­ments.

YOUNG MAN
Can you turn up the TV please?

The vol­ume on the tele­vi­sion kicks in upon one hor­rif­ic line.

PRES­I­DENT TRUMP
They will be met with fire and fury like the world has nev­er seen.

All con­ver­sa­tion stops. Every­one looks at the screen. Some peo­ple walk up from their ta­bles inch­ing to­ward the TV in dis­be­lief.

A col­lec­tive thought fills the air un­til some­one breaks the si­lence.

YOUNG WOMAN
Nu­clear War? This can’t be hap­pen­ing.

-END SCENE-

That was my break­fust.

Pres­i­dent Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy ru­ined my omelet. Vague mem­o­ries of Red Dawn and the Com­mu­nist Na­tion­al An­them play in my head.
 

 

Nos­tal­gia sucks. It’s great to re­call the high­lights but the fears of Nu­clear Ar­maged­don will nev­er be in the year­book. Nu­clear fall­out drills, dai­ly tours to the near­est bomb shel­ter, and track­ing the tra­jec­to­ry from the USSR (or in this case North Ko­rea) to Cal­i­for­nia will nev­er be fun. And then there are the scary num­bers:

9 na­tions col­lec­tive­ly con­trol more than 15,000 nu­clear weapons

Each one is hun­dreds of times more pow­er­ful than those dropped on Hi­roshi­ma and Na­gasa­ki.

An amount of en­riched ura­ni­um about the size of your morn­ing lat­te (8oz) would be enough to kill 100,000 peo­ple in­stant­ly.

Even a lim­it­ed nu­clear war in­volv­ing tens of nu­clear weapons could lead to the end of all life on the plan­et.

Each one can be launched with­in 15 mins of a pres­i­den­tial com­mand.
—Eri­ka Gre­go­ry (nu­clear re­former)

It’s im­por­tant to know that for a brief mo­ment in hu­man his­to­ry we were col­lec­tive­ly past this. Fears of nu­clear war­heads were so man­age­able that Su­per­man solved the prob­lem. Yes, Su­per­man IV: The Quest For Peace was corny but we all need­ed to hear that in 1987. Thir­ty years lat­er I’d like to hear it once more.

Gen­tle­man please stop play­ing with your war­heads.
 
 

—louis her­nan­dez

Flom­mist Louis Her­dan­dez is ob­sessed with go­ing Bauhaus and be­com­ing The Ma­chine. Prefer­ably a drill press. Copy­right © 2017 Louis Her­nan­dez. Im­age: Su­per­man IV TM & © Warn­er Bros. (1987)

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