27th Feb - Mutually Assured Destruction

Try as you might to ignore it, there's zero opportunity to avoid any talk of the 'I think we need to talk about Russia' situation. I've heard numerous theories over the course of the past 24 hours. One being that Putin is potentially facing terminal illness, and this is some kind of 'Last Stand', Wolverine style. Another is that the madcap midget is facing frustration over the Ukraine invasion, having previously concluded that things would be sorted by now, and that he wasn't expecting such a fightback. 

This, however, may not prove particularly positive, with many experts believing that the more the Stalin-wannabe is backed into a corner, the more likely he is to also push that big red button to save face and protect his own ego. Such a move would prove catastrophic, given the sheer potency of the Russian arsenal, with more than 6,000 nuclear warheads amassed by the Red Army. To put that into some kind of context, the United Kingdom owns a little over 200, whilst the United States? Just over 300. To say that the West would face an overwhelming barrage in the event of nuclear war, is an understatement. 

By now, you may have seen the graph doing the rounds, of the potential radius of destruction if such a missile was launched on London, somewhat humorously displaying the safe-haven of Winchester as a location unharmed by any chemical warfare, and allowing a variety of memes to pop up suggesting we all 'Go to the Winchester and wait for all this to blow over'. Perhaps most alarming of all, is the sheer speed of said nuclear weapons, with the flight path of a missile from Moscow to London taking just 20 minutes to reach the final destination. The most likely chance of peace during the Putin - whose behaviour, many experts say, has developed an alarming 'unpredictability' in recent months - reign of terror, is that of 'Mutually Assured Destruction'. 

The phrase was first coined during the Cold War, when the Doomsday clock was set to approach midnight. With the idea that, if one country used such weapons on another, the other would immediately retaliate and the population of both would be wiped out within half hour. Most likely, is that Putin has amassed such an arsenal as a strict deterrent to the Western World, and with NATO insisting that neither they - or the States - will send troops to intervene in Kiev, there appears to be no need to use them, for now. Should that latter sentence change in any way...

... Then so might Russia's stance on nuke usage.