A nuclear pissing match

I know we can’t expect the United Nations to create a utopia here on earth, but this meeting of the General Assembly does not seem to be spreading the love.

President Trump’s threat to destroy North Korea has now prompted North Korea’s foreign minister to threaten to explode a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific. Trump responded on Twitter.

“Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!”

As soon as I received an alert about the threat to test a bomb over the Pacific, I began trying to figure out exactly what stage of the nuclear bar fight we’re in. We’re past the tap on the shoulder. We’re past the “you talkin’ to me” part. That puts us somewhere between stripping down to T-shirts and firing shots into the ceiling.

It’s getting pretty close to the time when the bartender ducks under the counter and the patrons stampede into the street.

I don’t want to overreact. Countries used to fire off nuclear tests all the time – there have been close to 2,500 and the earth hasn’t fallen apart. But most have been underground because when you do it in the atmosphere you can’t always control where the fallout goes.

For example, in 1954, the U.S. fired off a test called Castle Bravo, which spewed enough radiation to fatally poison a fisherman in a boat 80 miles away and created a radiation plume stretching 5,000 miles.

But leaders can never back down.

I see only one solution. You cyberhackers, now that you’ve hacked all our credit records about 10 times over, how tough could it be to slip some ransomware into that Radio Shack computer running Kim Jong Un’s launch programs? Because, remember, once Earth is a charcoal briquette – stolen credit card numbers tend to lose value.

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