Dark Sentiments Season 13 — Day 24: A Sort of Duel
Posted By Randy on October 24, 2022
The concept of Armageddon isn’t an invention of nuclear armed modernity. For those of us whose formative years were incubated in the warmest parts of the Cold War, Armageddon in those days looked like a short, sharp, war not unlike the one so recently ended back then, but that played out not in the span of six long years but in hours. Here in Canada where no family was untouched by the horrors of World War 2, the man-made geography of bustling cities, limitless black ribbons of highway and railroad spanning the country coast to coast, pristine homes and gardens, had weathered the storm of the conflict unmolested by enemy action, even as the population swelled with returning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and assorted other Canadians called abroad who knew first hand what post-war Europe looked like. Sounded like. Smelled like. Felt like. Everybody knew what had happened twice in Japan. They also knew that the means to that end was in the sole possession of the Unites States of America.
Nobody in the game thought that imbalance of power would last forever, or even particularly long, and even after the Soviet Union got into the business, the general belief was that even a nuclear war would be winnable in the traditional sense of granting overarching supremacy to the victor. (more…)