When I was young, we genuinely believed a nuclear war was possible. Every few weeks we would have a "Duck and Cover" drill, where we would get under our desks to protect us from a nuclear blast. We only had fire drills every couple of months, so it was easy to believe that a nuclear war was more likely than a fire. The Cuban missile crisis had only been a few years earlier, we had seen Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe at the United Nations. We gradually accepted that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) would work as a preventative to nuclear attack and admitted there were not enough shovels to dig all the holes we would hide in. Who could possibly start a war if it meant an end to life on Earth?
Now we have an idea. Vladimir Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons at least three times in the last two years, since invading Ukraine. Maybe he believes that there will be no retaliation. The idea that leaders are rational, if sometimes ill informed, has been proven wrong more and more often in the last fifty years. Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, and Mao Zedong were all outside our experience, scary stories about places far away. Donald Trump has visions of being that type of leader, and an amazing number of people think he should be our president. So now we know "How could they elect someone like that?" because we have, and may do again.
Vladimir Putin has a history of brutal leaders to emulate, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin set an example, and he has used some of their methods on his own people. War is not as scary to politicians in the former Soviet Union. In America, we have the horror of Vietnam to keep us from rattling our sabre. We seem to have realized that the Middle East is a region to avoid, but we are taking the same steps we took prior to World War two; not involved, just protecting shipping lanes. Well, a civilian merchant ship has been sunk, and our attacks on "Iranian backed militants" is rapidly losing its opaqueness.
Should we become involved in a war in the Middle East, how does the danger of an American response decrease in the eyes of Mr. Putin? This is a reasonable question, and we should be working on convincing Vladimir that the answer is zero, even though we know better. We knew Formica desktops weren't going to stop a nuclear blast, but we still went through the motions.
Call it good or bad, the press had much to do with our impression of Vietnam. Ask someone under forty and they'll tell you the only people who returned had PTSD and were a danger to themselves and others. In reality, only 2.7% of Americans in theatre (because we didn't stay in Vietnam, we visited Laos, Cambodia, parts of Thailand and a couple of other little countries over there) died as a result of military action. You don't hear about the millions who returned and led normal lives because they were normal, not newsworthy.
In addition to his direct threats of nuclear weapons due to his invasion of Ukraine, he has also been suggesting that Russia might park nuclear weapons in space. This would be a direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1966, but the Putin regime has projected an attitude of "What are you going to do about it." Putin claims they will be anti satellite weapons, which makes no difference to the treaty, and is not truly plausible. The Russians abandoned an anti satellite program in the 80s, which at the time was best described as throwing a hand-grenade at a satellite. Vladimir has suggested that this program is similar, but a nuclear weapon is not required. One weapon one satellite, as satellites are one degree of Longitude (about 45 miles) apart. There was one incredible Reagan nuke in space idea, the blast directed to a number of independently aimed ruby tubes which would project something of a laser beam, hundreds of them. This was part of the strategy to get the Soviets to dump money into hopeless Research and Development programs. Maybe they did. But detonating a nuclear weapon in space has a similar effect as detonation on Earth, the blast radius of their largest (50 megatons) weapon is one mile. As for Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), effects, satellites are in space, already heavily shielded to protect from solar flares and such.
Putting it all together, we're looking at a bully with the ability to end civilization. A bully who may not even know what he's talking about. We have a history of reckless leaders, in searches of "The top ten brutal (or reckless) leaders," at least seven have been in the last hundred years. Its not something of the past like Genghis Khan, It's every decade or so. More people/more people to kill aside, absolute power destroys powers of reasoning. This is what you would call a convergence if you were of the type to believe the stars have any effect on individuals. Everything is aligned and I hope it has as much meaning as your astrological sign.
I am a survivor, I remain standing despite numerous reasons not to. But should the day come, the best place to be is ground zero. Even those who survive unscathed will have to live with the total collapse of civilization.
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