An ominous thanks on Thanksgiving

Every Thanksgiving I give thanks for much that has given joy and meaning to me and my family. But one thanks gives me pause: that we're still able to enjoy this troubled but still amazing planet without having set off nuclear winter.

It's been weighing on my mind since the early 50’s when I learned about the WWII bombings that ushered in the specter of nuclear destruction. Tales of impending Armageddon with Soviet Russia, news of bomb shelters, practicing ‘duck and cover’ in the classroom, all reinforced a sense of inevitable nuclear apocalypse.

At 17, I took the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis seriously, wondering each day if it would be my last, or if I’d awake from that night's sleep. That shattered my early indoctrination that the issue of nuclear war was solely a problem of preventing a Russian initiated nuclear attack. Clearly, the two superpowers, hosting thousands of nuclear weapons, could easily slip into nuclear war thru mutual fear, ignorance, hubris; indeed even simple miscalculation. Clearly, there were no good guys if nuclear war broke out, and nothing would be gained by ‘winning’.

Fifty-nine years later not much has changed. There was no nuclear peace dividend from collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The past few years have seen the creation of new Cold Wars with Russia and China over Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively. Either of these hot spots has the potential to bring the U.S. and its adversaries into conflict that could escalate to nuclear confrontation.

After 70 years of worrying about experiencing nuclear war in my lifetime, I consider it a miracle no nuclear explosions detonated in anger or by accident have occurred since the last one on August 9, 1945, a day before my 5 month birthday. So along with all the wonderful things I’ll give thanks for this Thanksgiving, I’ll give thanks once again, thru another miracle, we’ve dodged that very imaginable nuclear bullet.