And growing up during the Cold War isn't something that a lot of folks today 'get'. I do hope the lesson will not be lost on mankind simply because we cannot wrap our heads around it.

Well, okay, those of us who were there can, but we're not getting any younger.

In the early '80s I worked as a Target Intelligence Specialist for the USAF, targeting nuclear weapons at the bad guys. You can't really know what that's like, not easily anyway. It's like nothing you can imagine, growing up with this distant shadow hanging over everything, all the time.

Now, in fairness a lot of us knew full well that economics would probably eventually end it. The Soviet Union had been running an unsustainable economy for decades and eventually the piper had to get paid. What did take a lot of people (myself included) by surprise was when it happened and how fast the bubble burst.

As to fiction about avoiding Armageddon, whether by alien means or otherwise, or surviving it or putting up something in the ashes of it, there was plenty of that and with good reason. It makes for a good rocking story.

So much of speculative fiction is really about asking the question 'What if?' and then answering with a story based on that 'What if'? It can be used just to entertain, but can also be used to speculate on the question. Will the result be good? Bad? Is there a silver lining? What will things be like if that 'What if' took place? etc. When F&SF asks those 'What if' questions and then answers them in a reasoned way, it makes us think. It gives us our own crystal ball, which might or might not be accurate, in which to gaze. Then we can use that information. It won't tell us what lottery number to play, but it might give us a leg up on understanding and dealing with what might happen.