This is most likely going to be the only time I fire off a missive that has nothing to do with trans issues but I’d like you all to know that on Sunday, February 28 at about 7:12 AM PST the Armed Forces of The United States of America were put on Defense Condition, or DEFCON 2 for an indeterminate number of hours.
I’m sure a lot of my readers have seen the Matthew Broderick movie “War Games” to understand what that exactly means but for those of you who don’t allow me to tell you that we came very close to World War III.
In fact, we were exactly one DEFCON level away from World War III.
And nobody noticed.
Well, I noticed because it’s something of a hobby of mine to keep track of our military (being a former Navy man) and it’s readiness levels.
Basically, it lets me know what kind of day I’m going to have.
But, again, hardly anybody noticed this monumental event with the exception of a political website in New Zealand.
I don’t begrudge my President or my Pentagon going to DEFCON 2 after Vladimir Putin decided he was going to put his nuclear forces on alert. In fact, I praise this move as it was a sensible, prudent thing to do.
For those of you - mostly my readers in the United Kingdom - who don’t understand our defense levels, a little history is in order.
DEFCON is an acronym for Defense Ready Condition, DEFCON is what the Pentagon uses to indicate the level of threats the country faces from other nations, which then determines readiness for any potential response and I’ve been told you lot on the other side of pond don’t actually have something like this.
The DEFON system was implemented in November of 1959 after the construction of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command, the people in charge of monitoring and intercepting external threats to the United States) with five (5) levels of Defense Ready Condition that goes a little something like this:
At DEFCON 5, we are at peace. There are no significant threats to the United States.
At DEFCON 4, while we’re still at peace something looks to be a little threatening so out of an abundance of caution we’re going to step up security and intelligence procedures - but no worries, everything’s okay.
At DEFCON 3, okay there’s a threat looming on the horizon and while everything’s fine (for now) we’re going to put our bomber forces on alert and get them scrambled and in the air in 15 minutes.
At DECON 2, yup - something’s up and now we want all active duty personnel to mobilize and deploy in six hours or less. Everybody shake a leg because it’s about to go down.
The last time we were at DEFCON 2 was (reportedly) in October 1962 during what was then dubbed the Cuban Missile Crisis where the then USSR was attempting to park missiles on the Castro communist regime’s island of Cuba, a situation that the United States and one President John F. Kennedy found intolerable - so much so that he ordered a naval blockade of the island and dared Nikita Khrushchev to try and break through it.
And if Khrushchev ran the blockade…well, let’s just say the world would be a very different place right now as we would have gone to DEFCON 1, that we would have considered running the blockade as an attack on the United States requiring a full nuclear retaliatory response.
Yes, we were one DEFCON level away from World War III, a full-on nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
And, last Sunday, the 28th of February in the Year of Our Lord 2022, we were there.
I think Putin is having something of his own Cuban Missile Crisis at the moment as he doesn’t want NATO nukes parked in Ukraine and, yeah, I can understand his concern about that but I think the prudent solution would be to just let Ukraine remain neutral, not join NATO, pretty much the same way we just let Cuba remain communist, sans nuclear weapons.
It seemed to be a win-win for everyone and the world didn’t die.
As for me, should World War III materialize, I’ve no intention of trying to survive it or the world that comes after such an event.
Let this be my Last Will and Testament.
Oh, it’s okay - I’ve planned ahead: just down the road from me is an Air Force base, a prime military target certain to get nuked and that’s where I’m going to go if and/or when it happens.
One flash of light and…well, it’ll only hurt for a moment. Won’t hardly feel a thing.
But since we’re not going to die in what would be certain nuclear annihilation, how about a paid subscription? $7/month, $70 a year - certainly less than coffee at Starbucks every month.