They called it "The Cold War," and most people didn't even know it was going on. Every man, woman, child, plant, and animal on the planet was 30 minutes away from instant annihilation or a slow agonizing death from radiation poisoning and the nuclear winter. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I rode a Poseiden ballistic missile submarine. There were 41 of them. Between them, they had the firepower to end all life on Earth for 10,000 years or more. The combined firepower of the United States total nuclear warfare armaments would have been able to accomplish that 10 times over.
The strategy of both sides in this secret war was called Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD. The acronym was probably a cynical reference to the insanity of the war. All wars are insane, but this was the most psychotic ever devised. It went like this. If the Russians launched missiles at us, we would detect them and launch missiles back at them. Once that point was reached, neither side could do anything to stop it. Armageddon was on autopilot.
I was the boat's resident "spook." They called me the intelligence librarian. I was the keeper of books full of information that only three people on the boat were allowed see. Some of it was information only I was allowed to see. I used that information to maintain a plot of "threats." I saw in those books the faces of people who died in that war.
The people whose faces I saw died in acts of espionage. Many of them weren't even Americans. They didn't get flag-draped coffins and military honors. They died in a field or a forest or an alley with a bullet in the back of their heads. They died of starvation and exposure in some Siberian hellhole. They died in front of a firing squad in the middle of the night. Their bodies were dumped like human garbage. Their only memorial was a picture in a secret book with the word, "COMPROMISED" stamped on it.
So today, I'm going to remember those people who won't be remembered by anyone else, or at least by a very, very few. They weren't fighting for something abstract like freedom or patriotism. They were fighting to save the human race. Salute!
