Odds and Ends

When I grew up, success used to be something meaningful, something like a big medical discovery, a cure for pox, a political breakthrough, signing the START papers, a big scientific thing, the first man on the moon.

Nowadays it is having nuclear war averted for one more day...

The explosion at Donetsk on 8 February 2015 should be a wake-up call. How easy would it have been to mistake it for a nuclear explosion, just as some onlookers did!
I have played through many nuclear retaliation scenarios in my head, and all except one resulted in a nuclear holocaust. Usually Russia would score a short term victory thanks to the superior MARV technology where the MIRV of the western allies such as the United States would have trouble penetrating. In the end, however it would come down to the post-war effects which would be disastrous. If humanity was to survive, then we would still have a large scale catastrophe similar to an extinction event.

The one scenario that DID end well included a single nuclear missile shot by the western allies onto unoccupied Russian territory that would be let through, explodes with minor casualties, as a warning. It would include a high risk by Russia - after all, who knows that the missile does not change its course in the end - and a highly increased threat of a nuclear holocaust for the next between 1 to 2 and 5 to 20 years, equaling a Doomsday Clock set to between 0.30 and 1.30 minutes.

Humanity is at a turning point. Either it survives the nuclear age united, which would mean that finally people understand there is a lot more to lose than to gain, or it falls divided. There might be an alternative, but I fail to see it. Maybe humanity can survive divided, but at some point the climate change, the outer threats by asteroids, will not leave any other choice than to unite. The threat comes from humanity itself, but also from other places, those beyond control, those where a divided humanity no matter with what good intentions might not be enough to survive... or to avert its extinction for one more day.