The grim fact is, the world could end at any time, now or any time in the last 50 years. Even in times of peace, there have been many false missile alerts that could have gone all the way.
In January 1995, for example, Norway launched a satellite that went into Russian air space, and because of a foul-up in the Russian government, the pre-announced launch was not made known in advance to the Russian military missile command center. I first read about this in TIME, and saw later reports of it on ABC News, Frontline, Nightline and CBS. The Russians almost launched a first strike against the U.S., thinking they were retaliating AGAINST a first strike by the U.S. A high-up military officer made a calculated risk to stand down, and that's the only reason we didn't have a war.
As the Russian military has no money to spend on their aging defense systems and surveilance sattelites and early warning system, and training of staff, the likelihood of an accidental launch is vastly increased.
Russian soldiers guarding missiles and raw plutonium, worth millions, have often not been paid for months. Arab nations, terror organizations, and even organized crime, would love to have those nuclear weapons. Nuclear "suitcase-bombs" of the Russian government cannot all be accounted for, and may already be in terrorist hands.
The fact that the U.S. government now has a backup "shadow government" hidden in a bunker "somewhere on the East coast" is more than "just a precaution". It's part of a very real possibility of a nuclear strike in Washington D.C.
A regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan is considered the most likely nuclear exchange.
But nations like China, and very soon North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, are developing long range missiles that could reach the United States. So within 5 to 10 years, it will not just be Russia and China that could launch a missile strike on the United States, but many others as well.
I would be very surprised if European nations were not also very concerned about this, given their closer proximity to Muslim nations.
Another scenario that both Russian and U.S. military strategists must be aware of, is the possibility that a third party could launch a nuclear missile at the U.S. or Russia, making it appear that one is attacking the other, starting a nuclear exchange between them, leaving the world open to Muslim, or Chinese, or someone else's domination. But the radiation released by an exchange between the U.S. and Russia would irradiate the entire planet, so there's no third-party nation that wouldn't be annihilated as well.
When the U.S. and Russia were the only nations with nuclear weapons, there was enough forethought, about the catastrophic loss of actually using these weapons, to prevent a nuclear war from actually occurring.
But now the technology is accessible to many, whose anger and religious zeal makes them blind to the devastation these weapons would cause. There is the terrifying reality that these Muslim fanatics will use these weapons on the U.S. and other "Crusaders" as soon as they acquire them.
The Iraqi government was using a nuclear power plant in 1981 to create weapons grade plutonium, to build nuclear weapons. In 1981, the Israeli government did an air-strike and bombed that plant to the ground. It was officially condemned by the other nations of the world, but those same nations behind the scenes breathed a huge sigh of relief that the nuclear plant was destroyed.
I think the U.S. should do the same, in North Korea and these Muslim countries, as Israel did in Iraq, before it is too late. And world opinion be damned.
