Regret in the Shadow of the Big Bad Bomb

"Repent! Repent, for the end is nigh! Forsake all others and give thanks to the Minuteman for watching over us! Praise the boomers for patrolling the ends of our fragile world! Praise Trident, in his infinite wisdom! Children of Hydrogen and Cobalt, place no idol higher than your protectors, and pray for their mercy in dealing your fate! Those that resist are cursed to exist as lepers amongst the Furies, which consume the passions of man! They will sing your desecration, ye amongst the damned! Repent! Repent, for the end is bloody near! Repent! Repent! The end is here."

- Steve Price, Heaven‘s Light and the Legacy of Man

PREFACE

         Of all the things God put upon this Earth, only the nuclear weapon has amassed as much fear, respect and consternation as the daemons of our lore.  The Bomb exists both as a demigod amongst the weapons of the meek and as a demon that rides the same pale horse that defines human existence throughout history.  In short, nuclear warfare carries the stench of death - the eternal foil to the paradise that Creation represents. 

         The Nuclear Weapon exists as the counterbalance to an unfathomable equation.  The “Fat Man” and his companion, “Little Boy” were the sum of a mesmerizing plot to spare a million lives by unleashing the replication of a miniature-Sun across the peoples of the Earth.  The blinding flash that Oppenheimer created in the fateful 1945 summer across the vast expanse of New Mexico can be felt today in the storylines of television shows, and the threat of domestic terrorism, and in the core of society.  Kennedy’s “Nuclear Sword of Damocles” has been permanently fixated above our figurative heads, threatening at any moment to snap because of miscalculation, or misunderstanding.

         However, there exists no greater misunderstanding, or misrepresentation in the waking moments of our lives than the value that society has placed on the nuclear weapon.  We have labeled the ICBM a harbinger of death - those that would paint the Bomb as the living face of Evil - that commits genocide by the millions.  Yet how many more lives has our nuclear cache taken than the murderers that walk our streets, and stalk our children?  In a single year, one tenth the amount of victims of Hiroshima lose their lives in the United States to the bloodlust of a killer, be it the result of a crime of passion or a crime against humanity.  There have been sixty one summers to pass since Pandora’s Box opened, and as we prepare to mark the sixty-second passing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, can we openly condemn the big, bad, scary bomb for being the destroyer of men, when we have far more stains of our brothers’ blood on our own hands?

         The Bomb has saved your life, and yet you are blind to the fact.

         It was the threat of annihilation that kept the petty political and economical differences of the East and the West from destroying each other outright in the twentieth century.  The world bled for the first fifty years of the last century, before man gained the ability to destroy himself and his brethren with the push of a button.  Yet, despite man’s natural inclination to hurt his fellow man, the button has never been pushed.  Why is this the case?  Could it be that we have yet to create the perfect salted bomb, that can eradiate billions all across the world?  Are we waiting to kill tens of billions with our boomers instead of the single-digit billions that we could kill today?

         We can never willingly push the button because man is not inherently evil.  As with all other facets of life, the underlying presence behind everything we do is choice.  And when it comes to the usage of nuclear weapons, our choice is plain and simple: we can use the bombs and perish, or we can save the bombs and live for awhile.

         The most fundamental principle of existence is that life will find a way to survive.  Though some would argue that it is in man’s nature to destroy himself, quite the opposite is true.  We are very much the children of the Virus, as Hugo Weaving was once directed to say.  Humanity could never destroy itself outright, because everyone inherently believes that mankind can be saved from extinction.  If man did not believe in the remote chance of the eternal survival of his image, he would have given up and died out long ago.  Therefore, we could never intentionally or willingly launch the bombs.

         We are savages, yes.  Yet we are noble savages at heart.

         How does this translate into the misrepresentation of the nuclear weapon?  If mankind is inherently optimistic about survival, then the nuclear weapon is the antidote to total war.  After Hiroshima, the term “total war” could no longer be justified by the perimeters of pre-1945 World War II.  Total war now involves the destruction of every living thing on the planet, which is frighteningly possible in the event of a full-scale nuclear war.  Yet a nuclear war could never willingly occur, sans the drastic change in human nature.  Therefore, the nuclear weapon only exists as an instrument of death in terms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It was “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” that saved a million lives by ending the second World War before the Allied Invasion of Japan, “X-Day”.  It was the ICBM that kept the Soviet Bloc from moving on NATO, and vice versa.  It was Cuba, Berlin, and the 38th Parallel that prevented the rise of the dominion of the cockroach and the bee.  You owe the Bomb your unyielding admiration.

          The nuclear weapon deserves our cautious respect as an instrument of peace, not death.  It was foretold in the Bible that God would demonstrate his Revelation by unleashing the Horsemen of the Apocalypse upon us.  Accordingly, in the magnitude of its potential destruction, the nuclear weapon has taught us the value of human existence in sixty two years, whereas the entirety of our existence beforehand had been devoted in part to the same issue, if only in vain.  Those that would condemn the bomb only condemn their fragile existence in a fragile world.

- May 13th, 2007

         Why, hello there, strangers! Taking in the archaeological graffiti of our past, are we? My word, you all must be the Tyranny that brought down Liberty, Justice, and Wal-Mart! Although I must say, being the harbingers of the apocalypse and all, you folks appear to be rather… lanky. Ah, well, the size of the dog in the fight is less than the size of the fight in the dog, right? Now then, shall I introduce myself? My name is Regret. It’s a pleasure to meet you fine folks here in the pristine ruins of civilization. Quite a dose of ultraviolet radiation that we are having this year, eh? The fallout has been thick enough to choke a fellow around these parts.

         Since you all are new to our little dystopian slice of Heaven, allow me to give you the introductory speech that we give to all of our newcomers. Now, where did I put my spectacles… ah, yes. Ahem, “You are standing at the center of what used to be a dirty, shuffling metropolis! That is, before the great Earth-Shattering, Axis-Tilting, Rotation-Slowing Day of Mass Chaos and Devastation, otherwise known as a decade ago last Tuesday, wiped the slate clean and allowed mankind to start anew. See, look where we are standing! What was once a useless gas station has now become the site of our community hopscotch court!” Oh, by the way, watch out for little Sallie Mae Richards - her deformed limbs give her uncanny balance.

         Moving on. “While you are guests of this fine bastion of culture and class, you are more than welcome to the amenities found behind every pile of charred metal. However, I am required by both the law and by my own moral standards to warn you that drinking greenish-gray colored water, or for that matter water that sparkles like the rainbow may be detrimental to your health, and has been known to cause gingivitis, bad breath, tooth decay, and certain types of cancer in a percentage of the population.” Um, we are still trying to ascertain these facts for ourselves, so feel free to bathe in that big concrete container-thing over there if you wish. Ignore the smell - we think it’s coming from those two pine trees standing beside it.

         Oh, goodness, I almost skipped over the most important part! “Bare in mind that while you are in the area, it is considered unlawful to ignore the poetry of a cockroach. The punishment for breaking this law is thirty days in that building over there with the DMV sign over it.” You see, the cockroaches took a fancy to the poetry of great artists like Keats, Poe, and Nelly. That’s the only way that they choose to communicate with us - through the use of poetry, so it is kind of important to pay attention, you know? They are such wonderful poets, but ordering from a restaurant can be pretty tricky business when your waiter only speaks in iambic pentameter.

         Anything else that I neglected to mention about the big giant poetry-spouting cockroaches… nope, guess not. Well then, allow me to just say this: while you are here in town, you are forbidden from speaking about the “Pre-Decade ago Last Tuesday” era. We have no place for whining, sniveling cowards who used death and destruction to preach their views! We believe in the authority of the devices that would destroy our peaceful civilization should we become as perverted as our ancestors. In this society, we have a healthy respect, nay, a genuine partnership with the Bomb, because it has kept us safe, and spared millions of lives from being lost. The bomb is not our enemy! It is our friend, with its sole purpose to keep the vices of humanity in check! So join our brotherhood, one and all, and start living up to your potential! And please, if you still enjoy living in a world where cell phones, IPods, and promiscuity rule the day, maybe you should live in the real world, and stop worrying about living in the shadow of the big, bad, scary bomb. Repent, ye who would desecrate my sanctuary! Respect the bomb, and you respect your right to survive in spite of mankind.

         

FIN