Black Day

They planned to rely on pinpoint strikes—punish a country that, by a misunderstanding, still possessed a nuclear weapon. In a global crisis, the victim’s natural resources would be useful to the golden billion. When you have cards in your hands—20,000 cruise missiles and aerospace weapon systems—everything looks simple. They miscalculated. A single salvo from one submarine missile carrier from the spent-into-the-waste country was enough to pay the aggressor back in full. And that was only the beginning. Nobody expected the nuclear winter theory—everyone thought it was a myth—to be true. And the living would envy the dead, dying of cold and hunger in the darkness of an endless night. Many had saved money for a “black day”; the smartest stockpiled canned stew and ammunition. And now the Black Day has arrived.