Boom!

I'm not much given to paranoia as a glass-half-full optimist, but the current grumblings about the possibility of another less than local war seem to me to be a tad concerning. The UK government - according to sources - will be investing heavily in stockpiling military medical equipment and drugs specifically to counter the effects of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare. Whilst preparing for stuff like that is probably a good idea anyway, why isn't it the norm? Given the instability that the Trump administration is fomenting with its [non] negotiations with Putin, and the obvious fact that Russia is, for whatever reason, intent on expansionism; things are starting to look a little dodgy. Whether that is sufficient to induce full-blown panic attacks about an imminent Third World [nuclear] War, I'm in some doubt.

OK, Russia is intending to send some 10,000 troops into Transnistria, a pro-Russia separatist region of Moldova, which could in theory escalate the tensions between Russia and NATO. But at the end of the day, who would stand to benefit from all-out nuclear war? The maths and statistics on this were worked out over half a century ago: no-one would survive such a conflict and even those that got through the initial conflagration would ultimately succumb through disease and starvation. Not even the wealthy would survive for very long. Society would simply cease to exist. We know that, and the Russian people are equally well aware of the fact. What concerns me more than the prospect of nuclear war itself is that we spend so much time and money preparing for an event that all said and done is probably a paranoiac phantasm, although second-guessing dictators of a certain age is, shall we say, not an exact science...