Kurt Hendricks

How will the world finally end? It is my job to predict the unthinkable, to treat the deaths of billions as a game. After twenty years of this, I was numb, until a new question crossed my mind. What happens after the end of the world? Every two or three million years, some natural catastrophe devastates all life on Earth, but life goes on, and what little remains is made stronger. Put simply, world destruction is an unpleasant but necessary part of evolution. What happens then, I wondered, when mankind faces the next end of the world? I looked to Hiroshima, Nagasaki: thriving cities rebuilt from the ashes, monuments to the unimaginable, dedicated to the concept of peace. It occurred to me here that nuclear war might have a place in the natural order. But only if it could be controlled. Only if it touched every living soul equally.