10 Nov 1963 (1 day before Armistice Day) to be specific. Maybe it was something personal, but (as someone who spent their youth worrying that the Big One might

10 Nov 1963 (1 day before Armistice Day) to be specific. Maybe it was something personal, but (as someone who spent their youth worrying that the Big One might arrive anytime in the next 5-30 minutes, depending upon flight time) I see a lot of geopolitics going on around that date. Now I was fortunate: the US was already out of Vietnam before I was draftable, and I emigrated early in this century, before it was apparent that Afghanistan and Iraq would become slogs, so my life has had a lot of peace, with only minor engagements[0] of either of my countries. Compare KDvN: born in 1911, WWI+Kun 1914-1919, Hitler+WWII 1933-1945, Cold War 1947-, Korea 1950-1953, US involvement in Vietnam 1961-, plus Bay of Pigs 1961, Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, and chaos in Vietnam mid 1963[1]; worked on at least the A-bomb[1,5] and therefore knew what the H-bomb was capable of, but had no empirical evidence that MAD[2] would turn out to be effective, as that acronym was only coined in 1962 and doctrine announced sometime after. If I try to take her priors (as someone who had already started fleeing communism at 8, and had had, it seems, a life full of hope only between the ages of 9 and 22?) I wouldn't have put a lot of weight on peaceful outcomes then either. (then again, Stefan Zweig also committed suicide[3], so I'm not sure how much of a culture shock the New World was to former Austro-hungarians in general) [0] Lebanon, Grenada, Tanker War, Panama, Gulf I, Somalia, Bosnia&Croatia, Haiti, Kosovo (+ Libya raid & misc. no-fly's) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Kennedy's_escalation,_1961–1963 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Kennedy's_escalati... ; she fortunately missed Kennedy getting cancelled by 11 days. [1,5] EDIT: JvN died young from cancer, which, as an atomic scientist, leads to obvious suspicions. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction [3] having left The World of Yesterday as a book-length note?