April 20, 2026
"If you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength..." - Albert Jay Nock
President Trump's obscene Easter Day social post was ingenious for its timing. No one on planet earth would miss it. Was it the art of the deal at work by its most famous practitioner or was it something else ? Since he promised Iranians would be "living in Hell" if they didn't "open the F-ing Strait," it's understandable if for some people his threat meant nuclear annihilation. Perhaps he thought Iranians would conclude as much and bow to his demand. But they didn't.
Trump declared weeks ago that the US "won the war. It's over." If that were true, why are the Iranians still putting up a fight ? Are we now in a second Iran war, since in his view the first one had ended so badly for them?
Trump's ego is too great to just pick up his toys and go home, even though Ron Paul has suggested he do that. Rather than go home he has offered to make Iran great again. Has he done that with America yet ? Another move is the counter blockade. It hurts but Iran still has options. What would happen if Iran continues to stand its ground, whatever little it has left ? That American stockpile of nuclear weapons must grow more tempting to Trump as his exasperation mounts.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of states are a threat to all life, not just certain enemies.
Humans, a problem-solving species, cannot solve its worst problem - not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Reason: The solution's in the hands of states that created it and they don't want it solved.
Some problems go away on their own, and maybe this is one of them. It could happen in the next millisecond or 100 years from now. And in the aftermath, all other problems, personal and societal, go away. Think about it: No more rigged elections, rampant immigration, lying politicians, or protest gatherings; no more arguments over money, the stock market, or the nature of truth and discovery. Whoever your number one evildoers are, whether it's Trump, Iran, Russia, or your next-door neighbor, they will no longer bother you.
Life on earth is the Gordian knot awaiting Alexander's nuclear sword. At the moment it's in the hands of the American president. A glance at the Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947 and created by members of the Manhattan Project, tells us we're fast approaching the midnight hour when the sword will fall for the last time.
It is no secret that the major powers keep everything relating to its nuclear programs as closely guarded as possible, but we know enough to be in a state of chronic disbelief. According the Federation of American Scientists the US has 5,044 nuclear warheads as of May 2024, 400 of which are Minutemen III ICBMs. "Each ICBM carries one warhead, either a W87 or W78," and are located in silos in the upper Midwest and Rocky Mountains. Ballistic missiles "can be launched promptly, are not recallable, and are fast flying, [thus] they reduce time for decision making in a crisis." The W87 and W78 warheads, 300 and 335 kilotons respectively, have roughly one-third the blast effect of the older W59 1-megaton ICBMs. By comparison, the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan unnecessarily were roughly equivalent to 15-20 kilotons.
In her exhaustively researched NYT bestseller, Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen puts some of these figures in down-to-earth terms:
A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature that occurs at the center of the Earth's sun.
In the first fraction of a millisecond after this thermonuclear bomb strikes the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., there is light. Soft X-ray light with a very short wavelength. The light superheats the surrounding air to millions of degrees, creating a massive fireball that expands at millions of miles per hour. Within a few seconds, this fireball increases to a diameter of a little more than a mile (5,700 feet across), its light and heat so intense that concrete surfaces explode, metal objects melt or evaporate, stone shatters, humans instantaneously convert into combusting carbon.
Keep in mind this scenario describes the effects of a 1-megaton warhead. What insane degree of destruction would a 50-megaton Russian Satan II accomplish?
Conclusion
It takes money to blow up the world - money and the power to use it for destruction. The power resides in organizations called states, under which most of humanity toils obediently. States claim and enforce the power of taxation and since World War I, the power of taxation through monetary inflation under auspices of their central banks. Since monetary inflation is not understood by most people, thanks in part to economists on the payroll of the Federal Reserve, some states have been able to amass enormous destructive force that if tripped deliberately or otherwise could bring all life on earth to an end, and possibly provide an answer to the Fermi paradox.
Don't blame Donald Trump. Statehood gave him the power he wields. As long as we have states we will have coercion, which leads to the threats we're facing now.