One of my favourite movies is The Day The Earth Caught Fire. Released in 1961, it’s an apocalyptic story of the Earth being shifted off its axis by a series of atomic bomb tests by the USA and the USSR, causing chaotic weather around the world. The story is seen through the eyes of the Daily Express and its journalists – yes, the Express really did have actual journalists 64 years ago – and it’s brilliant. I have seen it so many times and while the movie has become horribly dated, it remains a powerful and, at times, worrying watch. And it’s as relevant today, perhaps more so, than it ever was.
It certainly fits in with my always-look-on-the-dark-side-of-life mentality. Overthinking as ever, I often find myself imagining a scenario in which the sun blows up, our universe is plunged into darkness and a new ever-worsening ice age from which there is no return. I’ve even thought about writing a book or a movie screenplay about it, except that I simply don’t have the imagination nor the talent to write it. Instead, this vision just sits there in my head.
The death of the sun, say those who know about these things, is something like five billion years away, when, it says here, the hydrogen runs out and it turns into a white dwarf, but that is not to say that we, the people, can’t at least destroy our Earth long before that.
My fear is that we will stumble into a nuclear war with anyone from Russia, Iran, China or even the USA. Yes, the USA, the America formerly known as THE LAND OF THE FREE, which is quickly turning into a fascist state. I grew up when the USSR was the enemy. In 1963, not that I remember it, the world came as close as it ever has done to a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I fear that the west, now massively split following the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House, is in a particularly dangerous time in history. Only yesterday, Trump said this about Iran’s apparently refusal to come to a deal about its nuclear capacity: “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” Interesting. Basically, if you don’t come to a nuclear deal, we will nuke you into kingdom come. A very “stable” genius indeed. In my lifetime, including what nearly happened in 1963, which as I say I don’t remember, I’ve never really believed a nuclear war would happen. I am not so sure now.
Whoever thought that the world would come to a near complete standstill in 2020 when the Covid-19 virus arrived? It had always seemed like a big virus was going to break out of Africa or China or wherever and it never did it. Yet this time it did happen, with devastating consequences. And just look at some of the world leaders we have at the moment.
The USA has the hard right, probably fascist, and definitely unhinged Donald Trump at the controls, Russia has a former KGB thug, war criminal and actual fascist, Putin, in charge. Then there’s the Mad Mullahs of Iran, plus nuclear Pakistan. When chaos and instability rules, what price an accidental slip into nuclear disaster.
I’ve even played it out in my mind. A re-run of Boris Johnson’s message about Covid in 2020: “From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction – you must stay at home”. But five years on, the PM would add: “Because of the nuclear strike by Russia on London today, it is not safe for you to leave your home for the foreseeable future.” My heart tells me this is unlikely to happen, my head is not so sure. Luckily, my head is usually wrong about how grim the future is likely to be. A world in which we spend the rest of our reduced lifespan at home, a lockdown that lasts forever. Where live means mere living and nothing else. No, it could never happen here, yet in my wild imaginings it could. What happens if AI assumes huge responsibility for what happens over our lives and concludes that actually all human life needs to end? If you think that’s impossible, then frankly you haven’t been paying attention.
I’m hoping that the madmen around the world, and especially the madman across the water, come to their senses, if they actually have any. The Day The Earth Caught Fire doesn’t come across so much as a work of fiction anymore. And that, for me, is the scariest thing of all.
