The Day The World Ended

"Then it happened. A nuclear weapon was deployed by one side, setting off a chain reaction that had been set in place ready to be triggered long ago, from which there was no coming back.
And the funny thing is, it was an accident."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-day-the-…
The day the world ended began like any other day. People woke up, had their coffee, checked their social media, kissed their loved ones, went to work.
Nobody knew it was coming. The news reporters and pundits hadn't been informing them that the US and its allies had been simultaneously ramping up aggressions against two nuclear-armed nations in a way that could easily lead to something going catastrophically wrong.
Nobody had explained to them what this could mean for them and their loved ones.

The mass media had never let the truth interfere with the military agendas of their government before, and, as it turns out, they never would.
Nobody knew it was coming, so nobody opposed the dangerous acts of brinkmanship that led up to it. Nobody resisted as the Democrats manufactured consent for escalations against Russia. Nobody resisted as the Republicans manufactured consent for escalations against China.
So it simply did not feature in anyone's mind that this could be the day they and their loved ones die in a nuclear holocaust.

They just went about their day, like it was any other day. Working, texting, thinking pointless thoughts, arguing with strangers on the internet.
Then it happened. A nuclear weapon was deployed by one side, setting off a chain reaction that had been set in place ready to be triggered long ago, from which there was no coming back.
And the funny thing is, it was an accident. Just a stupid, innocent mistake.
That's all it took. Nothing grand or dramatic. Just a bad decision, made at the wrong time.

One minute it seemed fine. The next minute it was the end. The end of everything.
Nothing rearranges your mental priorities like looking outside and seeing a mushroom cloud growing on the horizon.
There was fear of course. Panic of course. People ran. People hid. But the realization spread very quickly that there was no escaping this one. That this was the end.
And, in that brief moment of helpless surrender to the inevitable, humanity was the most awake it's ever been. The most tuned in. The most compassionate. The most loving. The most united.
The earth shook. The flames spread. Black carbon was hurled into the stratosphere for decades. All the earth's creatures perished in the darkness and radiation.

And then it was all still. Still and silent.
It was a mistake. A stupid, silly mistake, just like all the other stupid silly mistakes we've made since the moment we first stood upright. It's just that this mistake was our last one.
The only difference between our final mistake and all the innumerable others which preceded it was that there was nobody left to fix this one. To try and course correct. To say "Ah, I see where you went wrong there, let's make some adjustments and try a different approach."
No one left to realize there's no good reason we need to live in a world where governments brandish such weapons at each other just because a few sociopaths decided that US unipolar domination needs to be preserved at all cost.
It would be so, so wonderful if that had happened. But it didn't. And now it's all gone.

And it's too late to fix our mistake.
The Day The World Ended (audio)
soundcloud.com/going_rogue/th…

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More from @caitoz

25 Apr
There's no point admonishing the mainstream press for the public's plummeting trust in it. It can't change. A thing that has only ever existed to administer propaganda can't suddenly become journalism, and humanity's relationship with narrative is going to continue to fall apart.
Don't tell the mainstream press to do their job. They ARE doing their job. They're doing it perfectly. It's just that their job isn't what you thought it was. Don't say "Do your job!" Say "It sucks that I used to think you tell us the truth about what's happening in our world."
The MSM are completely and utterly irredeemable, and always have been. It's a waste of energy to try and get plutocratic propaganda institutions to suddenly begin doing journalism; that's not what they're for. Instead, teach people to stop seeing them as journalistic outlets.
Read 5 tweets
23 Apr
The US didn't re-enter Iraq in 2014 to stop ISIS, they re-entered Iraq in 2014 to stop Soleimani from stopping ISIS.
The "war on terror" has never been about defeating violent extremist factions, it's been about keeping the nations in the region from relying on Iran to defeat them. It's been about ensuring the US power alliance, not Iran, is the dominant military force in the Middle East.
It's also used to justify endless military expansionism in a key geostrategic region, of course. Soleimani was the strongest argument that the "war on terror" isn't actually necessary. And that's essentially why he's dead now.
Read 4 tweets
22 Apr
There are mountains of evidence that the US and its allies bombed Syria on false grounds in 2018, and yet people who point this out get called "Assadists" and "atrocity deniers". For scrutinizing the most powerful and destructive government on earth using evidence and journalism.
The entire argument that the OPCW scandal is fake boils down to a bizarre conspiracy theory that OPCW investigators collaborated with Damascus and Moscow to spin Douma as a false flag for some reason. This would've been laughed out of the room if it weren't backed by the empire.
It's freakish that you get accused of war crimes denial when actually **trying to get a war crime solved**. The facts are in, the Douma incident needs to be ripped wide open, and @aaronjmate needs to be showered with awards for his excellent work exposing this scandal.
Read 4 tweets
21 Apr
The Rising Threat Of Nuclear War Is The Most Urgent Matter In The World

"This should be the main thing everyone talks about. There is literally no more urgent matter on earth than the looming possibility that everyone might die in a nuclear war."
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-rising-t…
Check out this recent tweet by US Strategic Command, the branch of the US military responsible for America's nuclear arsenal:
This caused a lot of alarm, not because of any inaccuracy in STRATCOM's frank statement, but due to the bizarre fact that our world's increasing risk of nuclear war barely features in mainstream discourse.
newsweek.com/us-strategic-c…
Read 26 tweets
21 Apr
The US has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century and its Secretary of State spends all day tweeting about how other countries are human rights abusers.
No other government has done this. No other government has killed millions and displaced tens of millions since the turn of this century. Yet when you say this, you get accused of "whataboutism". No, idiot, distracting from the world's very worst offender is the "whataboutism".
Read 4 tweets
20 Apr
The contents of this article are so much less significant than the tweet makes it sound, but the replies and quote tweets are full of imperialists ripping their faces off in anguish over the idea of New Zealand allying with China instead of the "Five Eyes" intelligence cartel.
One problem with these paywall articles is people can caption them however they want when they share them and folks have a hard time reading them to verify that that's what it actually says. Get past the paywall here:
archive.is/nFra9
The tweet caption The actual story
Read 4 tweets

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