The Mushroom-shape cloud

There are a few things to be grateful for:

     -- destruction on the massive scale shown in the article below is mostly confined to parts of the Middle East and not to the whole of  Eurasia, as it was in the last Century;

     -- the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are not the only destroyers in the World today, and they are currently the major mass destroyers; the rest of the world is content to abjure mass destruction, killing "only" relatively small numbers of us at a time, not counting starvation and diseases.  May it be no worse until we become kindly!

    -- we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shape  cloud . . . .Kingston Trio  

 Yes, even here in the middle of the Ocean Most Pacific we can be tranquil while riding the the waves alongside the most destructive collection of instruments of mass destruction the World has yet beheld, for though we human animals be not rational, yet, we be fearful of setting off the first of the last of the mushroom clouds:  good for us!  Personkind's [sic] last best hope be our cowardliness..

Yea, though we be craven, we live to beget more generations -- not, however, a boon to elephants, panthers, jellyfish, and beetles.

I hope if we be sufficiently craven, in a few more thousands of years we may become kindly toward all beings.

My shade will like that, if it comes to pass.

Berlin, 1945; Grozny, 2000; Aleppo, 2016 - The New York Times

Durell