*26th September 1983 was the beginning of the end. Stanislav Petrov, the officer on duty at Moscow’s Serpukhov 15 bunker was close to dozing off when he was awoken by the sharp siren that pierced through the dead of night. On his screen, five bright green fluorescent dots flashed off of the coast of America. Cursing and shaking, he picked up his phone.*
*News of the pending attack was escalated up the chain of command within a matter of minutes before the fateful decision for retaliation was made. Fourty minutes later, amid a storm of fire, explosion and radiation, millenia of human knowledge, wisdom and culture was erased from the Earth.*
**Or so I am told.**
__________________________________
I’ve always wondered if my teachers truly believe the story they preach us. It has been generations since the war. Those who were fortunate to survive fled underground and had been here since. The last of those who had memories of life before the war had long passed many generations ago. No one knows whats the surface is like and no one dares to set foot into it. The surface, just like the past, is an ideal that is not to be reached, but also too precious to forget.