But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud

for man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day

someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.

They're Rioting in Africa, the Kingston Trio

I'm 41 years old. The earliest years of my childhood were spent on a military base, where every so often they would test the air raid siren. These weren't the fear-filled days of the 50s, but the tense days of the 70s and 80s. That air-raid siren hammered a point home every time it went off, that I, and everyone I knew, lived in the centre of a big, fat, nuclear target. Canada's largest military airbase was certainly on some Soviet list, targeted for destruction. Even moving away for university didn't really help that perception. My next stop wa the capital city of Alberta and home to a great many juicy refinery-type targets. Another bulls-eye.

As a child, and even a teen, I lived under the shadow of nuclear war. Deep inside, I never thought that I would live to 30, let alone 40. Pessimism about the future was a strong undercurrent in much of my youth, and I think a similar cloud hung over many of the people I knew. 

In the mid 1980s, the game Twilight:2000 came out, postulating an altogether realistic (at the time) nuclear war scenario. Magazine articles in support of the game even listed targets, including the city where I went to school... 

Now, we worry about ecological disasters, global warming, climate change, and a host of other issues. But the warheads are still there. Not aimed at anything in particular, according to their owners, but Russia and the United States have over 8000 nukes between them, or more, depending on which source you read. France, Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, and, likely eventually, Iran, have nukes too. South Africa used to have nuclear weapons, but actually dismantled them shortly before the end of Apartheid. The threat is still there. 

The sword still hangs over our heads, but it seems to be held up with more than a fine silk thread now. Hopefully in the future, that can become a chain, and we can get out from under the mushroom-shaped cloud.