Many may consider this akin to a "Chicken Little, the sky is falling post" but I don't mean it to be as much that as I do to call attention to the fact that any major military conflict today, such as that in Ukraine. has the ability to escalate beyond what anyone dares to imagine today. One major difference between today and the World War II-era of warfare is that today our weapons of mass destruction that are possessed by many of the World's Nations, mean that given the right circumstances that could easily occur, beyond the control of rational people, our world, our land, our nation, and our lives could be destroyed or changed beyond repair and all in the period of 30 minutes or so.
Given a man like Putin, if he is going insane or mentally ill, could trigger a massive strike or even a minor strike that would start a process of retaliation and counter strikes that would have no end short of the destruction of a large part of our world as we know it. I'm not trying to say this scenario is probable or likely but that the ease of such happening is far more possible than any of us would like to imagine or think of it being.
Conventional wars and battles are still the most likely and reasonable choice for nations in conflict but when a Nation has weapons such as Nuclear weapons on hand and a leader that becomes unhinged or remains unhinged, especially when that nation is led by a dictator or authoritarian with little to no checks and balances against irrational decisions or actions then the course of action by which everyone proceeds could at times be steered more by luck than reason and all of our futures and fate of civilization be much less secure than any of us cares to, or dares to, think about.
It is precisely this uncertainty that exists in our current world that makes conflicts or actions like the invasion of Ukraine so dangerous because if Putin is unhinged or irrational then he does fit the authoritarian with no checks or balances and can solely create such a situation that could lead to unrestricted Nuclear conflict with weapons and numbers of weapons that have the potential to alter the course of all of our lives forever or at least for our own lifetimes if we somehow were to survive it in the first place.
We, in North Alabama, can rest assured that given all that goes on in Huntsville that we would be on any adversary's top hit list to strike or wipe out. What would that mean for North Alabama?
Here is a website where you can get an idea. You put in the location and then it predicts what would happen. You also have the option to pick the style of weapon to predict as well as whether it is air or surface blast. Here is the site: