The day I heard this tale was at my first Pesci-Fest told by Alex after the feast, It opened my eyes to our history and brought it closer to reality than the dry bits we learned in school. I could understand why much of it wasn’t taught after digging into it further for these stories; it’s sordid, and I am ashamed to realize we developed as brutal beings with no qualms when it came to killing, maiming and injuring others of our very same species. In many cases, our ancestors could not even see past the surface differences of skin color or culture to understand we all belong to the same species.

War is no longer a concept we're familiar with; somewhat ironically, armed conflict is nothing we need to worry about now or in the foreseeable future. But, it has been an integral aspect of human history for many thousands of years. (1) No other species on this planet has killed or harmed its own with the alacrity humans managed in the past.

The Foundation traces its beginnings to approximately eighty years pre-catastrophe when the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as part of a war between multiple countries, referred to as World War II. (2) When it happened, it was the largest and deadliest conflict in human history, with over fifty countries fighting each other in every part of the world, resulting in over eighty million deaths. A brief explanation for the conflict would describe it as a fight over ideologies amid a desire by one side to claim more of the world's land and population under their rule. The Axis consisted of the countries of Germany, Italy and Japan and those countries under their area of influence who strove to bring large swathes of land and those living on it under authoritarian rule. They fought against the Allies, its core countries being the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union and China, fighting against fascism.

Those fascist countries committed genocide against their own species, seeking to exterminate anyone they considered ‟other.”  For much of our history and for many reasons, many humans did not consider all other humans worthy of living. The most common reasons for considering someone other were the color of their skin, the spirituality they embraced, who they chose to love, and if their identity or culture lay outside of identified norms.

Dropping those nuclear bombs did bring about a dramatic end to the war, but at a terrible cost, both at the time of the detonations and in the following months and years, continuing through the culmination of what we now call the Catastrophe.

The bombs were the most devastating explosive weapons ever created; nuclear material heated to thermonuclear temperatures before detonating created explosions, causing buildings over 2 miles from where the explosion to burn, killing thousands; some instantaneously, while others died from the burns and blast injuries and many others suffered cancers and died slowly in great pain. It was horrendous.

It seems obvious now that after witnessing the destruction those bombs brought, every country in the world should have come together to ensure no bombs like those could ever be built again. But they did precisely the opposite, creating more and more of the bombs in what was called a nuclear arms race until there were enough to destroy the world. The leaders promised that having the bombs made the world safer since they were thought to be a deterrent.

They lied.