my generation

When my daughter asked me about the threat of a nuclear war, and told me of her fears of one happening, I tried to reassure her and told her that I had the same fears as her when I was her age when the cold war was at its peak, and our so-called enemy actually had intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead right to our front door.

Anyway, this then got me thinking about how my generation was no different to hers but in some ways is so unique to make it seem a whole world away.

There are three main things that for me (no doubt other people will see things differently) will define my generation: landing a man on the moon, the whole technical world of miniaturisation and global communication and, of course, the dawn of a new millennium.  I genuinely think that over the last 50 years we have developed as a human race at a pace that will never, ever be equalled.

But among the things that haunt me is the very real fact that we still live under the shadow of a major war destroying our planet.  We couldn’t fix that - despite all our clever inventions - for our children.  Our progress will stand for absolutely nothing if 2 people are dangerous and mad enough to do the unthinkable.

After all, it was Albert Einstein who said “I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones”.

Scary.