Nothing is Safe

4 min readMar 9, 2022

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Ten seconds after I read about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, fear floods and sense subsides. Though there is no outward reaction, you see it most clearly in the nervous tap of my right leg against the seat of the train. Or see it one pane behind the glasses of the weathered man opposite. Or see it in the girl stood up by the door who chews on the skin above her knuckle. Or hear it in the voice of the train conductor. Or am I projecting? Surely they are not all as scared as me.

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Three minutes after I read about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, there is a pain in my left shoulder. Psychosomatic/related? Probably. At least, it’s reassuring to think so. Or perhaps it’s the 1 minute 12 second plank I’ve been doing twice a day since I saw the Instagram post from the celebrity actor with superior abs despite being 20 years my senior. My shoulder probably hurts because of that. Anyway, I think — marvelling at how my brain has already distracted itself — there are more important problems.

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Five hours after I read about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, I am swimming in my watery aisle, the calm rhythm of the leisure centre forcing me not to think, helping, when the thought comes to me unbidden, of a great flash of white light searing through the windows and the great mass of water in the pool rising as a slow motion tsunami as the blast wave throws it and all our swimsuited bodies unmercifully at the concrete wall.

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Thirty-one hours after I read about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, I am picking at the fraying corner of my phone case in the screenlit dark. Tonight, having done no exercise to put me to sleep, I’m forced to dwell on it. I’m resisting the urge to revisit the website I found years ago which simulates the impact zone for a nuclear strike. Disintegration zone, fireball zone, radiation zone, expanding dartboard circles carved across Google Maps. If one hit London, I would be just outside the fireball. Better to be closer, I think. Better to be closer, I think, drifting off to sleep.

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Three days after I read about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the door clicks shut, that old sound of safety. Home from the pub, Mum asks if we can watch the episode of Only Connect that we missed on Monday. Can you tell? I’m already forgetting. In the blue square is written “Kuala Lumpur”, and with no idea of the answer, I can only remember the one time over Christmas when I knew that the pattern from New York to Kuala Lumpur to Dubai meant tallest buildings in the world. Then think of how they will look, disintegrating like metal confetti; think of the Burj Khalifa splayed out across miles of desert floor; think of — a rumbling outside and I’m on my feet, literally stood on my feet, the rumbling grows —

An airplane taking off from Farnborough Airport. A sound I have heard in this house every day since 2006, presumably, but never noticed. I go to the toilet because Mum is looking at me funny, then refresh BBC News for the next five minutes, thinking that surely the intern who updates the breaking news wouldn’t bother to send out the missile strike warning before calling her family.

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Six days after reading about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, I am coming out of REM sleep, and my hippocampus thrusts together two nightmares of laughably equal horror; dreamstaring out of a plane window, I watch a missile arc across the horizon and disappear beneath pink cloud, only for a dark mushroom to billow outwards and upwards, then the air is thrust across the stratosphere, then the plane is reeling and spiralling, down and downwards and down, coming apart even as the cells of our bodies are hideously transformed. Outside of the dream, my shout, when it comes, is less of a scream and more like a call for a horse to slow down.

I lie still for a few minutes afterwards, feeling the soft throw against my lips, my philtrum irritated by stray cat hairs. But the feeling is good — the feeling is safe. It didn’t happen. No blast. Instead, right now, in the early hours of the morning, a hundred bakers are awake, kneading dough which will travel incredible distances in miraculous machines that our people, our human race, has climbed from the muck to invent. Perhaps we know what we’re doing, or at the very least, have beaten the odds to create comfort and security in a universe which offers neither. And as I drift off to sleep, the birds begin to sing. It occurs to me only as my heartbeat finally drops back to normal, only as my consciousness tips back into unknowing, that once the bombs fall, there won’t even be birdsong…

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Two weeks after I read about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, I ride towards Bristol in a carriage which rocks gently on smooth, well-maintained rails. I know the train will not crash, because there are regulations and authorities which ensure our safety. I am happy because my blood test came back OK, because they are pleased with my editing at work, because I’m going to order takeaway with my girlfriend tonight. I don’t think about Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov at all; my thoughts spiral slowly away from him so that even when I am reminded, the impact is lessened. At the end of the day, I can’t keep the sense of danger prominent in my mind for long. For that much, I’m glad.

Nothing is Safe

Written by The Trick Is To Keep Blogging