Silly things which goth girls thought about in the 80s and 90s

You know?

Like extinction, like the end of days. Fire from heaven and the annihilation of our species. Girls are silly way, so are many boys for that matter.

Now, you need to know about both of those things. The movie "War games" and the actual fact that this nice fellow named Stanislav Petrov saved your life, or your mommy and daddy's in any case. (Or your grandparents? Aren't you cute and precocious, or a testament to the power of this medium to retain even my ramblings into the dim distant future.)

But once you know both of those stories? And when I said "you need to know both of these things" I didn't mean that you needed to know them in order to understand what I'm on about. I meant you need to know them if you're going to be running around loose in the world. So go back, and come to understand something about them. Coming back here is optional.

So, they made a film which more or less portrays the events of that fun September evening when Stanislav saved all our asses by being bad at his job. (Could he be any more of a hero?) and they made this movie before those events actually took place.

If you're a youngin let that sink in for a minute.

Now, come to understand you missed the point. It's not that this was prescient screenwriting. 

The end was always that close, a million different ways, a push of the button, a missed connection. Mistranslation, misstep, misunderstanding? That's how close it was, the ever-present edge of that eternal night. 

Few spoke about it, but it never left anyone's mind. A flash of light, a power failure without a thunderstorm. God forbid the radio would start playing that horrid noise. Anyone who tells you they didn't hold their breath until they heard the "This is a test" and didn't rejoice that for at least a few more hours it was just a test...