With its current setting of 90 seconds to midnight, the symbolic Doomsday Clock used by atomic scientists indicates that we are, at this moment, as close as we have ever been to an imminent nuclear catastrophe. Clearly, now more than ever, we need to strengthen our nuclear disarmament treaties, because the prospect of an atomic war is a horror we cannot let become a reality. While the powers that be argue that the proliferation of nuclear weapons makes the world a safer place, they’re wrong, plain and simple.
Not since the Cold War has the world been at such a high risk of frightening my nervous dogs.
Simply put, our leaders have failed to see the existential threat they have put in place: My dogs can’t stand the sound of fireworks or thunderstorms. They cower at the sound of the Vitamix and have a near panic attack when I use my electric kettle. The other night, a car backfired outside. You would have thought it was driving through the kitchen the way it sent Pee Wee and Muffin diving underneath the living room sofa. With that in mind, can you even imagine how my poor little guys would react to the sound of an atomic bomb being dropped from overhead?
They’d be in a full-blown tizzy!
Do you remember Hiroshima? My dogs do not. They’re too young—ages 4 and 8, respectively (though the shelter wasn’t sure of Muffin’s exact age when we rescued her. They estimated 2, so we just treat her adoption day as her birthday every year). However, had they been present on that fateful day on Aug. 6, 1945, I know the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT raining down from the sky would have scared the bejeezus out of them. Their spindly little legs would have been trembling for days!
Too few people have truly thought through the implications of an atomic bomb attack. Imagine, for a moment, if a nuke were dropped today onto New York City. First, a terrible white light would flash across the sky, blinding everyone who looked at it. Then, a fireball the same temperature as the core of the sun would expand and immediately vaporize everyone within the blast radius. Buildings would crumble. Human flesh would melt from the sheer heat.
At this point, my dogs would be going crazy.
Skin or no skin, I’d be lucky to get an hour of sleep, what with the racket Pee Wee and Muffin would be making during a nuclear attack. Does a mad man like Kim Jong-un give a damn if innocent dog owners are kept up all night by their barking, anxious pups? If he decided to launch an attack against the U.S., I fear not even the most powerful ThunderShirt could calm my poor pups.
The existence of even one nuke on earth is a plague against trembly, bug-eyed dogs. Rather than spending tens of billions of dollars each year to beef up our nuclear arsenal, as our federal government does, we need all the global superpowers in the world to commit to total nuclear disarmament. Or, at the very least, they could learn to make these weapons a bit quieter.
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