The end of the world, again

A view of the post-sunset sky from the family plot at St. Mary's Cemetery
on Middle Road, Hanover Township, PA, October 12, 2026

One of the last things I do when I get home from work every night is check Twitter. It helps me unwind after the ride home and prepare to extract myself from the car and hike up the hill to my door. When I got home last night I saw this post from a friend and responded to it:

Nuclear war was on our minds a lot in the 70s and 80's. Many movies and TV shows from that era had nuclear Armageddon themes. Nuclear arms limitation talks were on the news all the time. We were certain that the end of the world was only one hot-headed decision and one button push away, and it could come at any time. That fear started to fade with the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the decommissioning of the former Soviet weapons stored in Ukraine, in exchange for a lasting written promise of protection to Ukraine from the United States.

Now Russia, led by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, is engaged in a years-long war to conquer Ukraine. It seems like it should have been an easy victory for Russia, but Ukraine has proved remarkably resilient and has made Russia pay dearly at every step. Putin has been frustrated in his efforts to conquer Ukraine, and frustrated people may take extreme measures. It seems possible that at some point Putin will resort to a nuclear approach to victory.

All this must have been on my mind last night as I slept.

I dreamt I was at work. Not the place I am currently working, exactly, nor anyplace I have worked previously. I was on the fourth floor of a building in Olyphant, PA. I used to work in Olyphant, but in a two-story building - I don't know if there are any four-story office buildings in Olyphant. I don't know what we did there, but I think it was government-related. We all wore shirtsleeves and ties, like the outfits worn by Manhattan Project scientists. One beautiful midday we were all there, doing whatever we did, and warbling sirens began to sound outside. We quickly worked out that it wasn't a fire or a tornado, and realized it was a warning of incoming nuclear missiles. We had to evacuate to our nuclear shelter in the basement. I called home to tell my mom - dead now nearly four years - to grab the cats and get in the basement until the danger had passed.

That was always my biggest concern, wherever I've worked: who will take care of my mom? If the city needed to be evacuated again like it did when I was in college, who would make sure she got out safely? Who would help her in the event of a fire or flood? Who would watch over her and help her, with my sister over a hundred miles away and my brother off with a family of his own?

But now she's gone, and all that worry is off my mind. I just need to worry about the cats these days. Everything else is secondary.