Are you worried this is the start of ww3 and nukes will be used ?

[LovelyYellowLabrador]

Or do you think realistically no one will start to use Nuclear weapons

Nope.

I am not worrying, as it wouldn't change anything if I did.

Yes, also in the UK and 45 mins from London. Surely people aren't weeping in the streets because they're under the belief that it's a very remote possibility? I think if Joe Public seriously thought the world was going to end tomorrow (e.g. if the Kremlin made a direct and very explicit threat to the UK) you'd see very different behaviour.

I can’t get myself worked up about this.

I mean I don’t want my son to die but I’m equally terrified on a daily basis that he might get hit by a car or suffer from cancer so death by nuclear missile is well down my list of potential causes.

Plus I don’t really understand why he’d target us first without warning, we’re keeping our head sufficiently below the parapet.

@FraterculaArctica

But you could say the same about anything scary... impending loss of a loved one "What's the point in worrying about it?" Yet no one takes this attitude then.

If someone you love is either terminally ill then yes you worry you panic and you grieve.

If someone is taken suddenly you don't because clearly you don't know what is to come.

I am slightly concerned that Putin is backed into a corner and crazy enough to try BUT I remind myself that there is no great Russian state if he nukes half the world.

In all likelihood I am more worried that he will cause a nuclear reaction in a Ukrainian Nuclear plant in a if I can't have them no-one can attitude (not for me clearly but for the people in Ukraine).

I read someone that whilst Russia has very strong Nuclear capabilites he can't nuke the whole of Nato at same time but they could easily take out the whole of Russia (I feel for Russians who are also probably petrified).

None of that is really based on any fact, these are just things that I let myself feel if I start to panic.

My DM died suddenly of a heart attack 4 years ago, it was a massive shock. I do not worry that the same could happen to my dad (clearly it could) because I can not do anything about it if it was and I don't think I could live my life in a state of impending doom or fear of what if's.

@FraterculaArctica

Yes. Been panicked for a month to the point I can barely function. So many articles saying this is only heading one way. Can't see the point of planning anything for the future, I don't understand why everyone else isn't panicking too.

Because we can't do anything about it.

@FraterculaArctica

Yes. Been panicked for a month to the point I can barely function. So many articles saying this is only heading one way. Can't see the point of planning anything for the future, I don't understand why everyone else isn't panicking too.

Really hope this is a troll. If not please speak to someone qualified to deal with anxiety.

@FraterculaArctica

Yes. Been panicked for a month to the point I can barely function. So many articles saying this is only heading one way. Can't see the point of planning anything for the future, I don't understand why everyone else isn't panicking too.

Because there is nothing I can do about it.

I don't watch the news.

I wouldn't prepare for nuclear with prepping either.

So why spend my day worrying.

Do you have children FraterculaArctica? It doesn't seem fair on them to demonstrate this if you have.

I think it is wise, as a species, to be concerned about the threat of nuclear war. However, in your normal daily life you need to balance that with a little faith in human nature.

Although there have been numerous times throughout the last century where the world has come close to all out nuclear war, I find this list of nuclear close calls oddly reassuring as you can see the reluctance of all parties to launch destruction against other human beings, even in times where they have believed themselves to be under nuclear attack. Turns out (1) there are a lot of humans involved in launching a nuke and, (2) those humans are very reluctant to launch them.

As a species we will be stupid enough to blow ourselves up at some point...it's just a question of when, sadly, isn't it?

No. I refuse to think like this, I think it's lazy. People's fatalism would disappear pretty quickly once they were living in the nuclear winter, or the climate-blitzed floodplain. I resent people with their cool cynicism who reiterate over and over again that we will destroy ourselves. You may find it personally comforting but it is a repellant narrative. Even if it's true, we don't get to just accept it, we have to try for the opposite.

No. It's out of my hands, and there's enough other stuff to worry about that is happening without worrying about what might. If something does happen then life was too short to have spent the last months so worried and anxious anyway.

The terminal cancer analogy only works if we know there's a nuclear attack coming, and we don't. An equivalent analogy would be worrying every day and unable to function because of the fear that someone you know might develop terminal cancer at some point in the future. And I think most would agree that would be OTT.

I am absolutely not a troll, I have posted on MN for years all under the same username. And yes I have three small children. Feel like I'm just going through the motions for them till it all happens.

Can't see the point of planning anything for the future, I don't understand why everyone else isn't panicking too.

If there was something I needed to do then I would do it. But panicking is no use and for me it's because of something like this:

"If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds." C.S. Lewis, 1948.

Let it find me doing my job, going to the cinema, chatting on MumsNet, looking forward to a holiday, planning my retirement....

Yes. Been panicked for a month to the point I can barely function. So many articles saying this is only heading one way. Can't see the point of planning anything for the future, I don't understand why everyone else isn't panicking

Have a word with yourself.

It hinges on the question is Putin an insane cnt or just a cnt? Any large scale nuclear attack by Russia will result in the complete destruction of Russia, hence why nukes are such a effective deterrent. Until or course you put them in the hands of a sick/mad man, who either wants to die and take the world with him, or is quite happy living out his final days in a bunker. So yeah I'm worried.

@FraterculaArctica

Yes. Been panicked for a month to the point I can barely function. So many articles saying this is only heading one way. Can't see the point of planning anything for the future, I don't understand why everyone else isn't panicking too.

I was like this last month. I seriously considered suicide as it seemed life was utterly pointless. Get some help.

I have - been to GP to increase dose of medication, on waiting list for counselling.

@FraterculaArctica

Those of you who aren't worried - is it because you think it won't happen, or you aren't worried about being snuffed out? This is what I can't get my head round... if someone close to you had say terminal cancer, you would expect to be upset and spend a lot of time talking about how to come to terms with it. Yet the likelihood of this happening to all of us and no-one seems remotely bothered!

I suspect that's because it's such a big fear that it's pretty much impossible to get one's head around properly.

I was a teen in the 80s and the threat was pretty big at the time, but although everyone was super-aware of it, I think people pushed it to the backs of their minds because they couldn't have functioned otherwise.

I am pretty nervous at the moment, not gonna lie. But keeping it at the back of my mind as best I can.

I agree with Laniana and actually there are plenty of humans that do act with integrity and aim to do good rather than bad. I feel I have a duty to my DC to encourage this outlook, it is wholly unfair for me to inflict on them a pessimistic, fatalistic outlook. With a huge array of information at our finger tips to feed this mindset, I can't help thinking it is a major reason for it! 'We are all doomed anyway' wasn't pushed upon us like this when I was a teenager in the late 90s, you did feel like you could change stuff.

Those of you who aren't worried - is it because you think it won't happen, or you aren't worried about being snuffed out?

Mostly the former. But we all get snuffed out in the end, you know.

People who are panicking are not doing so because this is actually that likely to happen. They are panicking because they are panickers. That's what they do. They will be the same people who got very panicky about the pandemic and who are constantly asking if there's going to be another lockdown. When the Ukraine situation is eventually over, they will find something else to panic about.

It's not that I'm unsympathetic - I used to have bad anxiety, so I understand how it feels, but it's important to recognise that there's a reason why you're panicking while lots of people aren't.

I would take any claims about the numbers of nuclear weapons with a pinch of salt. Practically none of them will be in any sort of state of readiness to launch.

A lot of what is claimed to exist may only exist on paper (corruption is a huge problem). Those that do exist may well not actually work. Russian military hardware has hardly been showcased by the war in Ukraine.

Not too worried. I am right next to Westminster so I am assuming we all will die quickly. It helps that I grew up in the 80s when Reagan and Brezhnev were playing nuclear games and also grew up in a country which lives under constant threat of nuclear attack ( India- Pakistan). My DC aren;t worried for themselves, though they are distressed about Ukraine. TBH we all suffered so much in the pandemic that I don't have the energy to worry about something else. Need to live my life now!

Anyone remember Nena's "99 Red Balloons"?

@JanetPluchinsky

It’s very likely now and I don’t understand why people are saying it isn’t. Self preservation maybe?

Russia have come right out and said it. It’s coming. Maybe not all out apocalypse but ‘tactical’ nukes.

When have Russia said this please?

No, mostly because WW2 was born out of the carving up of boundaries and sanctions imposed after WW1. This is much more like WW1 is still ongoing with brief periods of stability in between. There will always be conflict, there will always be wars, there will always be the unbearable suffering in the names of ideology. I wish I didn't live to see it but unfortunately I feel it's a consequence of our humanity. Ive cried as much as I can cry, despaired as much as I can despair but ultimately if it wasn't now it would be another time. There is very little I can do except ensure that I vote, vote responsibly and protest where I feel it's warranted. I can donate etc but there is little else I can do.