The week that started with speculations about President Oprah continued with a storm about s---hole countries and ended with a false (thank God!) nuclear missile alert in Honolulu. The warning, which went out over cell phones, television, and even old-fashion sirens that a missile was incoming seems to have been human error. Someone is alleged to have pressed the wrong button, though one would not be surprised if computer hacking is involved. In any case, for about 38 or so minutes, over a million Americans got the scare of their lives.

Who is to blame?

It would not be America of the 21st Century if people were not going to their usual political corners to place blame. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis was pretty sure that Donald Trump was the author of the revival of Nuclear Terror.

Of course, if we are blaming American presidents and not some errant technician or a hacker with too much time on his hands, Bill Clinton might shoulder some of the blame for letting North Korea have nukes in the first place.

Barack Obama, who neglected missile defense, is also a culprit. Trump, as with so many things, was just left to clean up the mess that he was bequeathed by others.

What to do when you think you’re going to die?

One has to think that a nuclear alert is just the way to ruin the start of a weekend. The media is reporting mass panic, with people wondering if any shelter was available on an island about to be hit with a nuclear missile.

Reports exist of people putting their children in storm drains to try to ride out the attack. Others took to social media to render one last farewell to loved ones on the mainland. Then, there is this fellow who knew how he wanted to spend his final minutes:

Welcome to the return of nuclear terror. Back during the cold war, a lot of people made themselves sick with worry that at any moment one side or another was going to let fly with a missile barrage which would have been responded to by the other side, possibly resulting in the end of civilization, if not all human life itself.

President Reagan’s victory in the Cold War ended that terror.

Nuclear Terror 2.0. is a little different. We now have to be afraid of a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran lobbing a single or just a few nukes at a city or two. The result would be bad, but not a civilization-ending event. So too would a terrorist cooking off an atomic weapon.

However, the possibility that keeps a lot of people awake at night is the idea of someone exploding a nuclear bomb in the upper atmosphere, frying the power grid and all electronics beneath it. Such an event would kill 90 percent of the people in North America, not suddenly in a nuclear flash, but slowly as the food and medicine run out, by extremes of heat and cold, and civil disorder.
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