WRITING HISTORIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

One does not simply engage in nuclear war. It takes time, it takes buildup. And we sure did let it build up. The wars started off small at first. So small, they weren't even wars. At the time, we saw them as arguments, as differences of opinion, as healthy political debates and natural civil pushback. But little did we know that these "healthy disagreements" were the beginning of the end of life as we knew it.

COVID-19 was the catalyst, the major world event that allowed us to turn a blind eye to every other catastrophe that we should have seen coming. When we decided to ignore reality, ignore the fact that even after two years, there was still a virus spreading that had the potential to debilitate any person, and whose long-reaching effects were still unknown, we gained a superpower. We gained an amazing delusional ability, the ability to pretend as if nothing bad could or would ever happen so long as we ignored any bad consequences. That "superpower" set us up for disaster. 

The war in Ukraine should have been our first wake up call, and China's involvement in the war should have been our second. But Western countries and their citizens just considered this escalation as their enemies being enemies, and third world countries viewed this as Western countries being Western countries. Some attention was given to the war in Ukraine at first, but just like with COVID, people simply decided to ignore war atrocities going on in faraway lands. It was tiring, caring about a war and other peoples' lives.

No one batted an eye at the Florida Flood and the Texas Winter, both of which happened in January of 2024. The Florida Flood was worse than Hurricane Katrina in terms of damages and displacement, and it competed with Texas's snowstorm for news coverage, since they both happened at the same time in January. No one seemed surprised by either occurrence, since it rains often in Florida, and there had already been a snowstorm in Texas in 2021. But no one asked why or how a flood and a snowstorm were able to ravage America, two major weather events right beside each other at the same time. At the time of these events, I was in Europe, studying at Oxford, and the British news coverage of the weather in America lasted only three days. In America, it lasted only 5 days on National news outlets.

Why is the national news coverage important to this history? Because the flood, the snow, and the damage they did to homes, factories, refineries, and businesses of all kinds sparked an economic downturn not just in Florida and Texas, but all over America and soon all over the world. Over 13 million Americans were out of work, unhoused, angry, and tired.

Corporations were starting to crumble. Almost every state in America was affected because of the mass migration of people out of southern Florida and Texas in order to find shelter and work. The rich, the poor and middle class alike wanted something or someone to blame, but at the same time they wanted to ignore the realities around them. They wanted to ignore how COVID, climate change, and unsustainable structures and habits might have led to this situation. The combinations of all this turmoil led to the nuclear war – it has always been easier to blame foreign countries for the turmoil happening on your own soil.

It sounds sudden, to just think that a virus, some natural disasters, and already existing economic and political instability could lead to all out nuclear war. But once America got involved in the Eastern European War, so did everyone else. Bombs were constantly sent between the allied Western countries and their enemies to the east, especially Russia and China. By December of 2024, over 1000 megatons of nuclear bursts had been detonated within various cities and countrysides. That is equal to around 25 nuclear bombs – I don't think anyone has been keeping track anymore, there's no point in recording human history since there will be no future generations to share it with. Military bases were targeted first, then food sources, then cities. We joke that once New York City was hit with a nuclear bomb, around the 8th bomb to be set towards the United States, the politicians all around the world just raced to see who could destroy the world the fastest, making these decisions from their very secluded, underground, and fully staffed safehouses. 

My family moved to Jamaica, staying in the house where my mother grew up, but this wasn't a voluntary vacation. My dad took up work at Kingston Public Hospital, and business was booming since so many Jamaicans had moved back home. The story of "repatriation" rung out across the world as immigrants and their children went back to the countries of their heritage – the Global South finally had its day.
Spring of 2025 never came for America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa; they went into an eternal winter. Russia and America were constantly between -50°F to -40°F. Europe and North Africa were only slightly warmer. They had thick plumes of dust in cities, visibility below 1/4 of a mile, and sunlight has not reached the northern hemisphere in months. No one is living in the cities that were targeted; most people moved away or were casualties of the war. Only the Midwest is habitable to this day. It's still freezing, as if a Minnesota winter stretched throughout the entire heart of America, but at least the radiation levels were low enough to allow for 10 years of life.

I spend my days in Jamaica, where the Blue Mountains have turned black and crimson due to the smoke and radiation from bombs elsewhere. We don't spend much time outside because the air quality is so bad, and we have had to build over our old open windows to try and protect ourselves from the elements outside. Before the war, my biggest fear used to be when bugs would fly through the windows and pester me when I was trying to relax, but now bugs are my friend, they're fellow survivors. The new enemies are the gusts of wind that bring dust and aerosols from bombs, from detonations that could have happened anywhere in the world. We feel the dust and the particles that come with the wind, but we don't feel the radiation that is slowly spreading among all of us. We don't feel it, but we know it's there. The Earth is dying slowly, and so are we. But every now and then I invoke my superpower that I gained from COVID, nothing bad will ever happen so long as I don't acknowledge it.