When Dad got the Bomb

It was a Wednesday in late September when my dad came home and told us we'd got the bomb.

“Can we see it?” I asked.

“You’ll see it when it’s installed,” he told us.

A few of the neighbours came over as the workmen dug out a launch-pit. We held a test fire, which flew over the estate’s houses. I watched it land in the pond at the rec and ran back to tell everyone it had worked. Dad passed round beers as the live missiles were put in place.

A guy at work had sorted it out for him. We weren’t the only people on the estate with the bomb – the Elliots had it too, but that was more for show. I don’t think they even targeted their system. But, right from the start, Dad had aimed his arsenal at Colin Peters a few streets over.

Looking back, Colin probably had no choice about laying off my dad, but Dad hated him personally for delivering the message. Word got around about Dad’s new weapon and, before the end of the year, Colin had his own nuclear capability aimed at our house, threatening retaliation and mutual destruction.

We had lessons at school about the different types of radiation. And I thought about the bomb, sleeping in our garden where the swing used to be. It was smaller than the ones that could destroy cities, but it would be lethal to anyone it struck.

By the time I went to uni, there were a dozen houses on our estate with nuclear weapons. Dad refused to give his up, even after what happened in Sevenoaks. Colin moved on years ago, and Dad gets on with everyone now, but he’s got used to having the silo in the garden. Mum says he’s given the missile a name. Even in his retirement, he researches the latest technology. Did I know, he asked recently, that a home missile system can target people in a different town now?

The manual launch control sits on the portable table besides half-drunk cups of tea, still aimed at the house where Colin Peters lived twenty years earlier. I sometimes think about replacing it with a decoy. I’m sure Dad wouldn’t ever press the button, but I can’t be sure.

Background

In some ways, I regret reading Annie Jacobsen’s book Nuclear War: A Scenario. Ever since, the dread of nuclear war has been at the back of my mind. Other books on the topic, such as The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States and Attack Warning Red! were bleak, but contained some possibility of survival.

As Lovecraft wrote, “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents”. The threat of nuclear war is a stark example of cosmic horror, something that is so frightening that we have to ignore it to carry on our daily lives.

Are stories about nuclear war a good thing for raising the issue - probably the most important one facing the world today - or is the possibility of inflicting ever-present dread on readers abusive?

Recommendations

I’ve been listening to a pre-release version of Avenue QAnon since this became available in September, but today the album launches on streaming. It’s an incredible piece of work, a response to how the online world has distorted politics.

With the streaming age, it’s rare for me to engage with an album as a whole. This record has stuck in my head: the lament of Live, Laugh, Love; rock track Hotwheels, (which has one of the best couplets I’ve heard in years); and There’s Something Going Down on /pol/.

In some ways this reminds me of The Holy Bible for its fierce intelligence and an unrelenting view of the world - although they are very different records, with Avenue QAnon being more tuneful and ironic.

(I could talk for ages about irony, and how it became tedious and exhausted by the noughties, when it became pop culture’s default attitude. Avenue QAnon’s irony is a different matter, allowing the record to respond with empathy to appalling and sometimes ludicrious ideas).

The album has faced some promotional issues, which Simon wrote about on his substack. Promotion of QAnon conspiracies is banned on some platforms, and the tools and processes around this are not well-tuned for irony. Hopefully, this record will find the audience it deserves.