Essay, Research Paper: The End...?

It is three o'clock in the afternoon. A cool wind blows across the frozen plain. It was a
typical March afternoon on the Siberian plain, somewhere deep in the Russian
wilderness. The flaura and fauna that inhabit this environment are the product of
hundreds of millions of years evolution, the time it takes to virtually perfect a species.
They continue to go about their game of preditor and pray, unaware of the petty political
struggles that are going on thousands of kilometers away.

The calm is broken by the sudden roar of the engines in nearby missile silos. The
weapons of destruction are pushed skyward by boosters strapped to the bottom of the
rocket, propelled by liquid propellant that took hundreds of man-hours to refine. A few
small, innocent mammals are burned by the extending flame. These were the first
casualties.

As the missiles roared out of the atmosphere, a small, tiny, insignificant blip
appeared on the radar screen of a junior officer in the NORAD command center, safely
hidden under a few hundred metres of granite in Colorado. The officer alerts his
commaning officer immediately. That officer alerts his commanding officer. The word
continues through the chain of command until the President of the United States recieves
a phone call at about two in the morning. He immediately authorizes a nuclear strike.

A coyote howls as the American missiles stream toward the sky in much the same
fashion as the Russian missiles. The sleeping mice are awaken by the load roar and the
sudden rush of heat. A few moments later two missiles detonate slightly above the
ground and aniahlate the missile complex. All of the technicians and support staff die.

A blip similar to the first appears on a Russian radar screen. The officers watch as
their orbitting satalites send them photos of the damage. A few of the senior officers
smile a wicked smile, and laugh a strange laugh, as if to say "We're all dead. Look what
we've done."

A missile fired by a Russian submarine splits into three equally deadly parts two
kilometers above Detroit. Detroit was selected as an industrial target, because of the
motor vehicle industry. This industrial target is home to over a million people. The
warheads go off a few hundred metres above the ground. Downtown Detroit is
immediately turned to dust and ash by the instriments of war. The Renicance Center,
which cost millions to build is blown to pieces. The sky lis lit up with the blast.

A thirteen year-old girl lies in bed, unaware of the fact that in a few nanoseconds
her life, and the life of her peers, will be changed forever. The thermal radiation,
travelling at the speed of life, sweeps across the city in an instant. Hundreds of thousands
are burned and many recieve a lethal dose of radiation. The girl is one of those.

A few seconds later the shockwaves of the blasts, which have united to become
one powerful stormfront sweep through at several times the speed of sound, turning
concrete to powder. It extinguishes the fires started by the thermal radiation, and then
starts some new ones of its own. Those who are driving in their cars are thrown with their
vehicles tens of metres. Almost everything recieves some ammount of structural damage.

The girl's house is no exception. All of the glass in the windows shatters, and
flies out in all directions. The house collapses, and the girl wakes up pinned down by a
beam that has fallen from the roof. She tries to cry out, but the beam has knocked the
breath out of her. There she lies for an hour, unable to do anything, still unsure of what
happened. She smiles crazily, and thinks to herself, "I guess there won't be school
tomorrow,". She slips off into oblivion, dieing because she recieved five thousand times
her yearly dose of radiation. A single tear rolls down her cheek, just before she dies.

It is not just the targets of these weapons who are destroyed. Winsor, right across
the border from Detroit, is also devastated. Toronto is the recipient of radioactive fallout
that has also come across the border. Radiation does not stop at customs checkpoints.

Russia does not fair any better. Many 'industrial targets', just like Detroit are
destroyed in just the same way. But those who die now may be the worst off. They face a
cooled climate from the material thrown into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun. They
face much fighting between the survivors. They face millions born with birth defects.
Killer viruses make Ebola look like Influenza. Billions die. Life must start over.

This will only happen if we let it happen.

I am become death, shatterer of worlds.
-Bhagavad Gita