Community: Russia and The Big One

~ Laura

How much are you paying attention to the war in Ukraine? On a scale of 1-10, what’s your fear level that Putin or Biden will drop some nukes by the end of the year?

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “Community: Russia and The Big One”

  1. Um. https://sgs.princeton.edu/the-lab/plan-a

    Yes, I am paying attention to it. Worry? Well, I rather think that if it were to happen, I wouldn’t be around to worry about anything.

    Yesterday’s sabotage of Nordstream pipelines 1 & 2 makes me feel a nuke is more likely than last week. I think the Russians did it. (Just my opinion.) I think they did it to cut off the ability of Russian oligarchs to cut a deal with NATO to ditch Vlad. After all, Russians connected to Gazprom and other important sectors have been dying in strange ways this year, so many that there’s a Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_businessmen_mystery_deaths.

    You don’t need nukes to cause havoc. Putin has been destroying cities. Mass graves are being uncovered in cities freed from Russian control. The energy shortage will cause havoc in Europe.
    Putin may get desperate enough to use nukes. I worry that we are still not recognizing the depth of his detachment from modern norms. The Russians are kidnapping Ukrainian children, adopting them out to Russians. (https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-23)

    This is a war in which people are a resource. It’s bizarre. It’s triply bizarre because Russia doesn’t have enough troops to hold any territory. My newest worry is, what if Russia collapses? Its neighbors must be paying attention. What if it becomes a region of competing warlords, many of them with nuclear weapons at hand?

    Like

  2. I have absolutely no bandwidth and that actually makes me understand a bit better when others don’t have bandwidth for the stories that are consuming me.

    Like

    1. I actually blame the constant news cycle and close attention and the broader reach of bad news.

      For example, we’ve had smokey days a few times in the last couple of weeks. It was bad enough a week ago and on Tuesday that I smelled the smoke when I went outside. But, when I smelled the smoke, instead of just thinking, hmh, something is burning somewhere, I could bring up the PurpleAir sensor broadcasting its air quality data onto the internet a couple of blocks away and download the climb of particulates in the air. Me being me, I could also make an excel spreadsheet tracking the climb and fall (but, I’m guessing this is a me thing). Having that information changes my perception and behavior, even if I think I’m just trying to be informed.

      In the days before social media pushing information at us, bloggers and instagrammers from around the world (who would have known abut Liza, killed by a Russian missile without that kind of information?) has a profound effect on our sense of the world and its wellbeing. And bad news spreads faster and farther and has more affective effect.

      We have had a bad time in the past couple of years but I don’t think that’s the simple cause of fatigue.

      Like

  4. Putin is doing pretty much what he clearly telegraphed he was going to do the spring. He’s just doing it worse that I had expected. I’m not more worried because everything new is better than I was expecting.

    Like

Comments are closed.