“BREAKING NEWS! THE MOST DEADLY TERRORIST ATTACK IN HUMAN HISTORY!”

James Wallace stood in front of a screen showing footage which would strike dread and rage into the minds of everybody in the world. A gigantic mushroom cloud, and just barely visible through the haze were the ruins of a city.

“The day we had all feared is now here,” he began solemnly. “It has been over 100 years since the infamous attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but today another city has fallen. We don’t know for certain what the motives of the terrorists were, but regardless, this will go down as one of the worst days in human history. The day when the Israel-Palestine conflict truly got out of control, and Jerusalem was destroyed.

"The terrorists behind this attack will certainly regret this. Nothing could possibly enrage Israel more, and Israel also has nukes. It is disgusting to see how these terrorists are willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on both sides to fuel their fantasies of destruction. If nothing else, them and all those who support them need to be wiped out so that nothing like this ever happens again.

"On the bright side, if you can even call it that, it seems probable that the international community will be forced to reach a final conclusion to this conflict, whatever form that may take. Perhaps the region will even become more stable once the new status quo is formed and brutally enforced. Whatever happens, what we can know for sure is that it will not be pretty for a long time to come. History will not look favorably upon us for creating and using weapons as cruel as nuclear bombs."

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"The end of days is here! The enemy has destroyed the City of God! But this is all part of His plan! The old Jerusalem, with all its compromises with the enemy, has been destroyed by their hand! But all they have done is made way for the New Jerusalem to emerge in greater splendor! Fear not! This is all part of the Lord's plan! All who follow Him will be rewarded!"

Although Daily Revelation was generally considered ridiculous and radical, even among more religious types, it was now exploding in popularity. The hosts of the show were clearly trying, and largely succeeding, to milk this new turn of events for all the attention they could. People made fun of it, sure, but the populace was scared, and many of them latched on to it as a source of reassurance and hope.

"This Earth will not last for much longer! But I say to everyone watching, you still have one last chance! It doesn't matter if you lived your life as a believer or not! Come to Jesus Christ now and be saved! With Him you need not worry about anything that is to come!"

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When the dust cleared, Jerusalem was little more than a hole in the ground. Thousands of years of history and cultural heritage, destroyed just like that. The perpetrators were not caught or even identified, rather they were vaporized along with their bomb, the Western Wall, Al-Aqsa, and dozens of other important religious monuments.

Hamas vigorously denied any involvement in the attack. It didn’t matter, though. Within a day, soldiers were marching into the West Bank with American air support backing them up, and another nuclear explosion hit Gaza in retaliation.

A few diplomats were desperately trying to get the situation back under control, but it was getting worse far too quickly. Every media station was freaking out, trying to get attention and push their preferred narrative, and people were panicking and rioting as more and more middle eastern countries got dragged into the conflict and began launching nukes at each other. Religious leaders were calling it the end of times, and for once they seemed to be right.

Embassies all over the world erupted into chaos as various diplomats with a million different goals hurled threats and accusations at each other and formed patchwork alliances. The panicked world rapidly organized itself into two rough alliances: the Coalition, led by the US and Europe, who claimed that Hamas had stolen the bomb and attacked Israel unprovoked, and the Defense Front, led by China and Russia, who claimed that corrupt Israelis gave the weapon to a splinter group to form a pretense for invasion.

I didn’t see exactly what was going on in the war rooms, but it was clear that somebody high up in the Chinese military had panicked, believing they needed a first strike advantage to survive the conflict, because soon enough China had launched a full nuclear attack on the Coalition, followed shortly by Russia. The Coalition counterattacked shortly after that.

Humanity was doomed. There were simply too many nukes flying. There were nuclear defense systems, but they were not effective enough to fight off a full-scale nuclear assault. Only a few bombs would be successfully taken out, while multiple nukes were being launched at the enemy’s highest priority targets to make sure some would reach. The war would not last even a day after the Chinese attack.

About twenty Coalition nuclear missiles were heading towards Haven. I could block them, though. We had adequate defense systems to handle hundreds of missiles in a single area, though they required delicate computer control to operate in a fail-safe manner. I ordered Stefan to get on a boat because the island was in danger, and he was too shocked by the news to argue.

News stations cut out, replaced by emergency messages from the various world governments. It was too little, too late. There was no time for people to evacuate before the first cities were levelled. Very few of the major cities survived. Hundreds of millions of people had died, and many more would die soon afterwards as they were starved out by the utterly broken supply chains.

It was a good thing I had invested so much in vertical integration, huh? I still had mines, power plants and factories under my control in relatively remote locations. My production would be hurt by this, but not as badly as one might think.

I checked in on Stefan back on his boat. He had been watching the news on his phone. He had curled up into a ball, and was talking to himself. “Oh God… we finally did it… we destroyed ourselves. But… Haven will survive! We can block all the nukes! We can rebuild humanity! I wish it didn’t have to come to this, but I did it! We did it! We can build a better world from the ashes of the old!” His voice was frantic, and he shook as he said it, as though he didn’t quite believe what he was saying.

BOOM.

Stefan looked back at the mushroom cloud, unable to believe his eyes. Haven was gone, just like that. He screamed in horror. “DAMMIT EVERYMAN! YOU MISSED ONE AND NOW THEY’RE ALL DEAD!”

I watched as human society began to collapse in on itself, with most of its major cities bombed to rubble within the space of a few hours. The humans were still pointing fingers at each other, trying to pin blame on the ruins of their enemies. As it turns out, though, neither of the two stories were quite true. There was just enough planted evidence for both possibilities that people would end up believing whatever they wanted to believe.

Guess how the terrorists really got their bomb?

Come on, don’t act surprised. You knew it was going to end this way. Elijah was right about me. You don’t want to optimize a value system even slightly different from your own.