George Carlin, of course, was the first comedian that I heard describe to me that our desks were made of wood and how useless these instructions had been.
Someone or more than a someone thought it was necessary to describe to little kids and to show them such a film, regarding issues we could not we could not comprehend, and if we could have, there was nothing we could do about them. George Carlin and other comedians used the fact that we were to hide under little "wooden desks" to describe the insanity of war in general.
It was very funny when Carlin first told the story to me. But, in reality it was no relief to the feelings we had in the back of our minds from the first grade to adulthood.
Our entire childhood it was the Russians that we had been taught were our evil adversarial enemies. That was understandable. You can know about Nuclear Bombs. But, you can't understand what an attack of many nuclear bombs would actually be like.
Over the course of my lifetime, Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster Missouri would host the ever newer weapons that could not stop a war, even if they could only do that through deterrence of a Russian attack. This was best explained in the one phrase we all have heard, "Mutually Assured Destruction." Not very assuring is it?
Whitman Air Base was the center of the first B-52s, later the agriculture area I grew up in was filled with nuclear silos which housed the nuclear ballistic missiles which could reach the Soviet Union (Russia) over the polar ice cap way faster than the B-52s which would now follow up after the nuclear missiles. Whiteman Air Base is located in west-central Missouri pretty much in about the center of the continental United States.
The nuclear "triad" was completed with the advent of the use of submarines as launch platforms for even more nuclear missiles. I don't know if Whiteman was ever considered as a nuclear submarine base, but I have never had the credentials to be attend any such meetings.
However, Whiteman Air Base is now the home base for the "Star Wars" looking B-2 bomber. This bomber can take off from Whiteman, in the center of the nation, in the morning and with the aid of giant tanker aircraft loaded with fuel to "gas up" the B-2 in the air to get places sooner, so it can reach any target anywhere in the world blow something up and be home for dinner in Knob Noster. This is not a brag. It has already done it many times.
In fact, this bomber, which still seems new and futuristic will soon be replaced by a new, improved, bomber. I have heard that it can fly to Mars, fight a war, and be back to Whiteman for dinner. I have not read the specifics of that.
I rarely have dreams that I clearly remember. In my college years, I had a whopper that showed me that my fear of the Russians and nuclear war was, and had been, embedded in my psyche for my entire life. I dreamed that I was at a summer party at a home in the country near Whiteman. I saw in "living color" a launch of all of the nuclear ballistic missiles surrounding the area I grew up in. There were many people that I had known all of my life at the party and we all just stood absolutely still and watched in horror the contrails of those missiles as they sped away from us over the horizon.
I remember the feeling (in fact I am getting goosebumps as I write this) of what it was like to realize that over the polar ice caps there were already a like number of nuclear weapons headed toward us. Mutually Assured Destruction!
Carl Sagan had taught us on his science show "Cosmos" that it would only take 40 current nuclear explosions to start a "nuclear winter" that would kill nearly all life and all human life on earth.
I am not going to look it up, because I don't want to, but before a long term treaty between the US and Russia limited and reduced both nuclear arsenals, each of us had more than 10,000 nuclear weapons. I think that number was paired down to a couple of thousand each. It doesn't matter though, does it? If Carl Sagan was even pretty far off, 4,000 weapons is over the 40 threshold.
I have lived in fear of a few crazy Russians with flawed math skills to try the dreaded preemptive first strike. All of my life that has been in the back of my brain.
Ukraine was under the chokehold of masters until 1991 or so when it became a free and independent country. It was an important part of the Soviet Union before its collapse when many former Soviet states broke off leaving the Russia of today.
Ukraine in modern times was divided between the Russian and Austrian Empires from the 18th Century until the end of World War I. Between then and World War II and then the break-up of the Soviet Union, different Russian dictators including Katherine the Great and Joseph Stalin and eventually Putin, millions of Ukrainians have been murdered, starved, robbed and enslaved.
They were the both the agricultural "Bread Basket to the World" and the largest manufacturer of Russia. Most of the tanks and artillery both sides were using when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 were made in Ukraine. Ukrainians are lined up behind their most unlikely of leaders and are nearly unanimously fervent to become a great democracy like the nation they admire the most, the United States. Sad isn't it. It is embarrassing what our "great democracy" is becoming.
All Americans know that a US Russian war would result in massive casualties if not human ending destruction.
In fact it had never occurred to me how immense the brain drain of the breakup of the Soviet Union has been through the loss of the Balkan countries, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia (which was a forced union of 3 of today's European democracies), Hungary, Finland, etc.
Ukraine is slightly smaller than the state of Texas.
Ukraine Russia
| Population | 43,745,640 (July 2021 est.) | 142,320,790 (July 2021 est.) |
Land area: Russia is around 17 million square kilometers, while Ukraine is around 603,500 square kilometers.
Ukraine is significantly smaller than Russia, with its geographical area being roughly 28 times smaller and its population considerably less as well; in terms of landmass, Russia is approximately 28 times larger than Ukraine, making it the largest country in the world, while Ukraine is the second largest in Europe. Russia has 100 million more people than Ukraine.
This brings two things to mind. Not only were the Russian Nuclear weapons made in Ukraine, they were stored there. In order to show what kind of nation Ukraine wanted to be during this new independence age, Ukraine, was asked to give all of the nuclear weapons and materials back to Russia by THE UNITED STATES. We made them do it and then we broke our promise.
Ukraine agreed, if the US would step in if Russia ever tried to take Ukraine over again. We gave them that guarantee. We did not uphold it. But, Ukraine has many times taken the brunt of my biggest fear.
Never did it occur to me that Russia was a "paper tiger." Never did occur to me that we would not one day have to fight Russia using American soldiers, even if it did not become a nuclear war.
Mutually Assured Destruction
In February 2014 Russia took and occupied the Crimean peninsula, which world courts have said was illegal. Crimea had the right to Ukraine. The US griped about it, but did nothing. The Russians stole the Ukrainian Navy and the ancient port of Sevastopol. This emboldened Putin.
In February 2022 Russia as ordered by Putin attacked the whole of Ukraine with the motive to occupy and make Ukraine part of Russia.
The United States offered to take the president of Ukraine and his government out of Ukraine to another country to be a government in exile.
The Ukrainian president's answer? "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition."
We have offered and mostly delivered more weapons, machines, information than any other country. Sometimes oddly later than could have been done. But, we did keep Ukraine in a fight that most of the world believed would not last a week.
Ukraine stopped and controlled the attack to a draw, and now is even in a position to win.
No nuclear weapon has been detonated. No American troops have been used, the dread of every American my age since Vietnam.
The Russian military is joked to be no longer "the 2nd mightiest army in the world", but instead to be the 2nd mightiest army in Ukraine.
My underlying fear during my whole life was tested and proved to be wrong. A vastly outnumbered and out stocked with weapons new and smaller nation has taken on my nightmare and proved it was based on a two-bit poser and bluffing bully, that could be beaten.
A country with no navy evened up the fight by destroying the vaunted 2nd navy in the world with toys built by the weaponry designers and manufacturers of the Soviet Union weapons over two centuries.
Russia is in a real pickle. My dreams have been avenged.
Ukraine wanted to be a great democracy like the United States. So, they took on and have nearly destroyed the Russian military and broken its resolve and its economy, maybe beyond repair. What was I so afraid of. Why do some in our congress question why we are giving money to Ukraine?
We are not giving Ukraine any money. The have earned the money by volunteering to put their own boots on the ground to fight our enemy. We owe them for every American military member who has not died in the Armageddon Nuclear War that we would have fought. We owe them for the soldiers and civilians killed and maimed by a dictatorial knucklehead like our own we are fighting today. Trump and Musk do not need to help us, they need to be in counseling.
I was not the only 6 year old kid in America to be traumatized by the lifelong buildup to a war that cannot be won. We are the younger of the now old baby boomers. There are millions of us. We should all try to tell anyone younger this story of what happens when you become rich and complacent.
We should all tell our government to make Ukraine a part of NATO. Look at a globe of the world. Russia is half a world away from us if you don't look at the Alaska part.
Ukraine has a vast and nearly undefendable border with Russia. Neither side can defend it from the other. In order to string the Russian army out, Ukraine invaded part of Russian driving Putin out of his mind. Now they won't give it back until the Russians leave the Ukrainian occupied areas. That's fair. What parts of the Russian Black Sea navy fleet Ukrainian RC model boats did not sink have had to leave the Port of Sevastopol because there were two many RC model airplanes sinking what was left of the Black Sea fleet.
Trump just sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to a meeting with Russia in Saudi Arabia regarding the Ukraine war. Ukraine was not invited. How much did that trip cost the US taxpayers?
Some representative from the US side, I believe it was Mark Rubio, said that "President Trump is the only man in the world that can bring the two sides together."
I say that Ukraine is the only country in the world brave enough to kill the boogey man.
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