The year is 2035. Tensions between the U.S, China, Russia, and the U.K. are at an all time high. All of these countries have internally resolved to only attack in retaliation. There are 2 people in the U.S. that can fire all of the nuclear weapons at once on a target, Bill Haslam, the president and Mark Tenner, a highly ranked officer in the U.S. Air-force.

Today both keys are set to be handed over to Mark while the president makes an agreement with NATO and the U.S’s rivals for every country on Earth to destroy all of their nuclear weapons. Mark, however, unbeknownst to anyone believes that war is the only way out of these stressful times and that if he could just strike first, the U.S. would win and he would be hailed as a hero. He is wrong.

The president of the U.S. enters the conference room and engages in formalities with the other world leaders as the tension between the global superpowers starts to be released, and the key that holds the possible destruction of the world is handed to Mark. Mark contemplates the possible consequences of turning the key, realizing that it could mean the total destruction, or recreation of life as we know it. As the agreement is passed to the president and he starts to sign it Mark, corrupted by the power in his hands, decides that he doesn’t care what happens and turns both keys.

The leaders of the world are pointlessly rushed to outdated Cold War shelters as every nuclear wielding nation in the world retaliates.

As the alarms signaling the inevitable demise of man sound every person on planet Earth realizes the depth of the situation and in what surely has to be a naturally programmed way decides that there is no point in any anger or sadness or terror, for there is no way to stop this force. So in the last 30 minutes of mankind’s existence families either reunite or call each other, the orphaned and family-less bonded with their pets, strangers bonded and revealed their darkest secrets and insecurities to each other on the streets, babies stopped crying and started laughing, and for the last 30 minutes, wether it be because of fate, or God, or karma, or just pure chance, every human was happy.

In future eras new life would emerge, not only on this planet but on many others too. A few of these would evolve intelligence and consciousness like we did. Some of these would die in ways similar to how we did. Some others would cure death, others achieve global peace, and more still create technology that we couldn’t even begin to dream of. They would look back on the ashen remains of what once used to be humanity and see us as a primitive, barbaric species that fell to it’s own ignorance. But they kuldip never achieve what we did, they could never all be happy.