Several thoughts: First, there's a Tiktok meme about how if you're having trouble coping just talk to a GenXer. There is some truth to this. Anyone GenX or old

Several thoughts: First, there's a Tiktok meme about how if you're having trouble coping just talk to a GenXer. There is some truth to this. Anyone GenX or older grew up with the imminent threat of thermonuclear war as just part of your existence. Second, if there happens to be nuclear war we're all completely hosed so in a way it doesn't really matter. A huge chunk of us won't survive the initial attacks. Many of the rest won't survive the period thereafter and I have to imagine that an awful lot of people will... opt out... at that point too. It's a bit like worrying about if the plane you're on is going to crash. You probably won't be around to deal with it. Third, it's kind of amazing how close we've already come to this already. Let me introduce you to Vasily Arkhipov [1]. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, US destroyers were detonating depth charges to get Soviet nuclear submarines to surface and leave. Those onboard were cutoff from communication with Moscow and didn't know if nuclear war had begun. The command structure was that 3 key officers needed to unaminously agree to fire their nuclear missiles. Two of them voted to launch. One, Arkhipov, refused. Were it not for this one person's vote, the world would've ended in 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis is still of relevance today, actually. The US precipitated that crisis (by deploying nuclear weapons to Turkey) and Kennedy's recklessness almost precipitated nuclear war. For 200 years the US has had the Monroe Doctrine [2]: > It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the U.S. Under this doctrine, Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba was unacceptable. Yet we're somehow shocked that Russia finds (and has explicitly stated) that NATO, being a hostile or potentially hostile (from Russia's perspective) military alliance with nuclear capabilities, on their doorstep was (understandably) unacceptable. It's also worth mentioning Stanislav Petrov [3] who overruled an early warning system that had falsely detected a US nuclear launch in 1983. Anyway, so I guess my point is you don't really have any control over the outcome so there's not much point worrying about it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov