I found myself googling ‘bomb shelters near me’ this week. The results were not particularly comforting.
Never in a million years did I ever think I would be sitting down to write about the threat of nuclear war. Call it optimism, call it education – I genuinely thought our species had learned that lesson.
And yet, here we are.
The night Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States, I sat down and cried. As an Australian living in the US, I am painfully aware of the shortcomings of the US system – healthcare and immigration come to mind pretty prominently here. But, it seemed glaringly obvious to me what a poor choice Donald Trump was (and is!) for President.
Listen to our latest episode of Tell Me It’s Going To Be OK, from nuclear wars to neo-Nazis. (Post continues after audio.)
That night on my lounge room floor, I cried for my family, for women, for minorities, for the sick and disabled, for the disenfranchised, for immigrants, for America, for Australia and for the world.
It only took seven months (yep, efficient!) for Trump to bring us to the brink of nuclear war. Admittedly, the regime in North Korea has been testing the limits of the world’s patience for decades. But even I know you probably do not want to THREATEN A DICTATOR ON SOCIAL MEDIA, and I am not the leader of the free world.
When I was 16 years old, I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan. The image of a man’s shadow seared onto a section of a bank’s outer wall still haunts me. I remember recoiling in horror at the pictures of destruction and the display cases of melted flesh and glass and tile. The idea that we could do this to each other again terrifies me.
Every time I turn on the ‘fake news’ it seems like there is something even worse to be concerned about every. Single. Day.
As a parent, this is *yugely* concerning.
It is widely reported that any North Korean target in the US would most likely be Hawaii, Alaska or California. I live in Los Angeles. Yay for me! Whilst there are contradictory assessments as to whether North Korea has such long-range missile capabilities or not, many Californian mums (such as myself) are incredibly anxious about this tense situation. Most of us are just trying to be rationally prepared for the worst-case scenario.
Lately, I have seen a surprising amount of questions posted about how to deal with a nuclear attack in LA based mummy groups on Facebook. Surprising, because this is not generally a common topic of discussion for mums looking for advice online.
