A few days ago, some high ranking official (hmm... where to put the hyphen?) of the North Korean government said that North Korea could launch a preemptive strike against the United States by launching a nuclear bomb aimed at... Seattle.

Now, I hope that someone has pointed out to the North Korean powers-that-be that taking out Seattle will not, in and of itself, eliminate the nuclear arsenal of the United States government. A preemptive strike only works when your attack disarms your opponent. If you don't successfully disarm your opponent, then it isn't much of a preemptive strike. See: Japan v. U.S., 1941.

In the case of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were at least *trying* to disarm the American government by crippling the nation's Pacific fleet. Why North Korea thinks that taking out Seattle will prevent the United States from fighting back, I do not know. I think that's why our current administration has stated that they don't take North Korea's sabre rattling seriously. And while I agree with this sentiment, I'm not sure that telling the North Korean government "you lie" is a particularly face-saving gesture. Maybe, someday, the administration of the United States government will ask for my advice concerning diplomacy.

But I digress. You see, I didn't want to comment on foreign policy so much as discuss personal ramifications if Seattle were to be hit by a nuclear bomb.

I currently live in a suburb of Seattle called Redmond. If downtown Seattle were to be hit by a reasonably-sized nuclear detonation, either in the air or at ground level, then my neighborhood would quickly become a radioactive fallout zone. Our buildings would probably remain standing, but the quality of life (short though it may be) would decrease dramatically. If I read the charts correctly, the radiation would likely kill the healthy adults in my neighborhood within an hour or two. Of course, this assumes that the bomb is on target, and doesn't accidentally hit Everett or Renton by mistake (in which case we might actually escape with our lives).

The point being, it's hard for me to conceive of a more lame, albeit newsworthy, way to end my concerns than to have a nuclear bomb detonated near my neighborhood. I mean, I've got a mortgage to pay off, a business I'm trying to get off the ground, a child to raise, and a marriage to tend, let alone a writing career I'm trying to develop... I've got issues I'm working on. With each passing year, I manage to make a little headway here, experience some setbacks there. I hope to reach the end of my life able to say that, all things told, I done okay.

Speaking purely from a personal point of view, I would be profoundly disappointed to have my life end in the middle of all this tension (I'm talking about my own personal struggles here, not international diplomatic tension) with simply some bolt from the blue. I mean, a random death would be annoying, but *this* kind of random death would be doubly annoying.

Can you imagine reading a big, thick novel with dozens and dozens of interesting characters, all with their own story arcs and intersecting in fascinating ways, with various plot reversals and complications and funny anecdotes, when halfway through the story -]BAM[- there's a nuclear explosion and nothing but blank pages for the rest of the book? *That's* what I'm talking about. No denouement, no nothing. If you read a novel like that, you'd say, "What was the point?"

And that's my point.

Nuking Seattle would be annoying. So, North Korea, if you're listening: please allow me to recommend bombing Paris, instead.