I should post an excerpt from my first book. A memoir. In it I recount the story of an ordinary American professional woman on her way to work at a well known global financial institution. It was a bright, sunny early autumn day when Americans received a substantial wake up call. What ensues is a horror story and years of nightmares and trauma forever after. And...those who were not witness up close and personal---well well well...reactions? Same as now. Let’s say the COVID injured of today are the 9/11 injured of 2001. We, the 9/11s kept to ourselves as no one wanted to hear how it literally went down. You know, conspiracy theories and all that..hmmm.
So here we are now. I would love to have a nice chat with the cavalier, naive folks but not without them reading or watching Cormac McCarthys THE ROAD first. It is very real to me...and so, let’s have the down and dirty discussions and write the scary stuff. Before their dreams come true.
Me thinks we have been far, far too kind and polite. Polite is not going to age well, I’m afraid.
Thank you ever so much for your post as I was feeling a little too cozy in my work achievements this morning. Cheers and good luck to us all.
BTW EPA told me directly that the “ air quality was fine” down there and meanwhile I had staff who were vomiting and fainting in our beautiful skyscraper. So yea, nothing new under the sun as they mandated the poison jabs in 2021 so one could “safely work” in their windowless buildings.
I sense that McCarthy has has similar presentiments of doom that I often have when I see the childish recklessness and malevolence with which our governing class comports itself. Thanks for reading our substack, and thanks for sharing your thoughts..
Thank you John. I was moved into an emotional space that surprised me. This essay is a powerful expression of what some of us may be working hard to compartmentalize and keep our own hungry beast at bay. We are only becoming stronger and more determined to be and act in our own authority. Clint Eastwood said it best in Unforgiven, "Go ahead, make my day." Bullies don't frighten me as they are at base, cowards. They will most certainly be unforgiven!
My father was a paratrooper in WW2 who was deployed to occupy Japan soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He would never speak of what he experienced in that Hellish place. All he would talk about was how terrifying it was to jump out of the airplane. He wouldn't talk about anything else. He was always distant and on edge. Back then we didn't know about PTSD, we just thought we had an angry father.
I agree. I would hope to see the bomb go off before I went off a few seconds later; experience Oppenheimer's "Brighter than a Thousand Sun" from the Gita. In a sane world we would be working towards total nuclear disarmament. The trouble is that it is mostly the immoral and ruthless who get into political power. I remember going to some presentations in he UK in the early 1960s on civil defence, even then total fantasy. I was a graduate student doing nuclear physics at that time so did have a grasp of the real scale of the problem.
Dr. McCullough! Thanks for the work you do! I’m a MSc. student studying immunology in Canada & help run a non profit group called “Students Against Mandates” ( https://www.studentsagainstmandates.ca ). I would love to talk with you all things science & medicine - send me an email if you have time SAM-science@protonmail.com
I’m hoping the idiots who are playing with the idea of nuclear war understand they won’t have anything left if they let it happen. Their dreams would be toast - literally and figuratively.
Tulsi Gabbard is SUCH a disappointment. She paints a distorted picture using the usual Russian talking points. She is blaming the US for attempting regime change in Russia. But she conveniently leaves out the fact that Russia attacked Ukraine first and attempted regime change there. Only months later it became clear not much will change unless there’s regime change in Russia. She conveniently leaves out the fact that it’s Putin who is threatening to use nuclear weapons against a sovereign country, NOT the other way around. I really wish she had a spine to rationally evaluate her indirect support for Russia, where civil liberties do not exist.
Why not cite someone’s opinion from EVEN more than 8 years ago in a situation that’s DRAMATICALLY changed this year? Maybe dig up something from 50 years ago to try to prop up your opinion.
I personally know DOZENS of people who are ethnic Russians who only speak Russian who lived in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions PEACEFULLY for DECADES within Ukraine who were forced to flee this year to central and western Ukraine because either their houses got bombed and destroyed by Russians or they simply do not want to end up under oppressive Russian occupation. So I urge you to simply talk to the affected people about the situation, instead of listening to the Putin appeaser Tulsi Gabbard.
Perhaps you will consider that "the situation that's dramatically changed this year" is the culmination of a reckless policy that has been planned and pursued for at least 8 years. I'm just offering a different POV on a deadly serious matter. Our government is clearly committed to waging the proxy war in Ukraine, and it seems highly unlikely that Gabbard's opinion or mine is going to change that. I sense you can rest assured that the policy you favor will continue to be the official policy. I just hope that things don't get too out of hand, thereby resulting in a nuclear exchange.
During COVID, you treated and listened to people first hand, instead of getting your opinions from the media, which was the right thing to do. But you’re falling for it in this case by listening to Gabbard, a politician/media/entertainment personality. No rational person wants a nuclear war. Ukraine isn’t invading foreign countries. Ukraine isn’t threatening anyone with nuclear weapons. It simply wants to be left alone by Russia. It’s disappointing to see people capable of critical thinking to just roll over for an invader like Putin just because he hinted at using nuclear weapons in a delusional invasion he hoped to achieve in 3 days.
The opinions stated in this piece are those of the piece’s author, John Leake, who studied Cold War history and political philosophy and lived in Central Europe for 15 years, studying continental European affairs. As always, Dr. McCullough limits his statements to medical matters, though he welcomes a multiplicity of opinions about all matters affecting mankind. Thank you for sharing yours on our Substack.
I also welcome a multiplicity of opinions about matters affecting mankind, as long as they’re based in reality. This is why I personally spoke to dozens of Russian-speaking Ukrainians - some of whom I’ve known for decades - who lived in southeastern Ukraine peacefully for decades who are first hand affected by the invasion. Meanwhile, you chose to back your opinions with opinions of politicians and entertainment personalities.
"Ukraine isn't threatening anyone with nuclear weapons" How do you know this? How do we know what has been said and what threats have been made and by whom? We don't. We can't. We only hear what they want us to hear via broken and cherry picked media releases and statements.
If I walked up to a crowed and agitated them by being an ass and then pulled out my phone when they turned hostile towards me. I could easily go home edit the footage and make the clip look like I was the one being victimized even if I instigated the whole ordeal.
I'm not saying Russia is faultless. I am saying there is no way we can be sure who is saying and doing what with such cherry picked Intel
Please look up Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia, the UK, and the US respecting its territorial integrity.
Kissinger is evil and helped bring about current state, as evil as zbignew.
And he is not so evil as to want to end all life, that is for Biden who is too old to care.
I think the hacksxxxxines are internal nuclear bombs In side our body and they shed like radiation so we won't need nuclear weapons if we keep up gmo injects.
Also, I was born in Russia.
I wish my citizenship to US of Arrogance can stop the attack on Russia, can it?
Grasshopper Kaplan says stop the attack on nUkraine by the West, we have lost.
Let it go....
Russia won already.
So now let's end the hacksxxxine Harmacide scamdemic, the internal nuclear bombing
I've been listening to www.ttb.org for years now and one thing I've learned from Dr. McGee is that eventually "your chickens will come home to roost". It pains me to say it but America has caused so much pain and destruction with our proxy wars that eventually we will be on the losing end. We are the only nation that has used a nuke on another nation, and we did it twice. Russia is gathering it's friends and creating powerful alliances while our leaders are acting like insane bullies where nothing will ever touch them. I just don't see this turning out well for us.
Does anyone seriously think that if we allow Putin to conquer Ukraine that the Baltics and eastern European countries wouldn’t be next? and that China wouldn’t learn the lesson and take over Taiwan and perhaps other countries in south east Asia?  And once it was clear to Putin, that he could blackmail the west, what would stop him from intensifying his cyber and other attacks on western Europe and the United States? I don’t notice anyone have answers to those questions, but they need to be asked and seriously debated.
Me! Me seriously thinks than if we 'allow' Putin to defend Russia against NATO on his doorstep that yes, he'll be quite happy to leave it at that. He's just doing what he said he would if NATO got that close.
Unlike Western politicians he seems a man of his word.
You betcha, the insanity of this whole orchestrated situation we find ourselves in now with Russia is lost on the " fortunate sons" , the elites and their useful idiot servants who believe in their own diabolical ideology. They live in their secure little world of self belief and a loathing for the rest of us....unfortunately, no ammount of personal security or money will save them or their families any more than me or mine, should those weapons be used. There will be no victor, no money and no ideology relevent to the world that will be left..... lets pray Einstein wasn't right....!🙏
"COVID-19 or Nuclear War?" -- Bio-engineered weapons can damage Humankind forever. Bombs can certainly vaporize a lot of stuff, and surviving an irradiated environment is nothing to trivialize. But bioweapons can change the Human Genome guaranteeing the permanent destruction of Humanity.
I honestly wonder about Minds that are brilliant enough to hack Nature, weaponizing it, are simultaneously so f-ing stupid as to actually do it and think there are no consequences. I believe generals who would use nukes have more respect for their weapons than do those people.
I had a dream last night..a nightmare I guess..it was upsetting but not scary. I can’t remember much but I do recall hearing a weird noise and then looking and seeing missiles flying across the sky…suddenly they started to come down towards me. I remember thinking they were nuclear and I was going to die. I wasn’t sure if it was worth trying to hide or not. I woke up about then. I’m not really into prescient dreams so I told myself "it's only a dream.." I mean the whole thing was just so unreal.
I remember being really detached about the idea of dying from the bombs..it was so odd…and I live in a remote area very unlikely to be bombed..but like you said..maybe dying faster is better? Most likely I'd be one of those trying to survive somehow.
I think the young people today simply can't grasp the concept of nuclear war and what would happen to the world and to human kind in general. We older folks grew up with duck and cover drills and seeing fallout shelter signs around us...it's more real to us somehow.
What scares me most? My spontaneous reply ~ the US Government... under Biden.
Importantly, the true architects behind the state are not elected.
They lurk in the shadows, subjecting everyone to their insanity.
I should post an excerpt from my first book. A memoir. In it I recount the story of an ordinary American professional woman on her way to work at a well known global financial institution. It was a bright, sunny early autumn day when Americans received a substantial wake up call. What ensues is a horror story and years of nightmares and trauma forever after. And...those who were not witness up close and personal---well well well...reactions? Same as now. Let’s say the COVID injured of today are the 9/11 injured of 2001. We, the 9/11s kept to ourselves as no one wanted to hear how it literally went down. You know, conspiracy theories and all that..hmmm.
So here we are now. I would love to have a nice chat with the cavalier, naive folks but not without them reading or watching Cormac McCarthys THE ROAD first. It is very real to me...and so, let’s have the down and dirty discussions and write the scary stuff. Before their dreams come true.
Me thinks we have been far, far too kind and polite. Polite is not going to age well, I’m afraid.
Thank you ever so much for your post as I was feeling a little too cozy in my work achievements this morning. Cheers and good luck to us all.
BTW EPA told me directly that the “ air quality was fine” down there and meanwhile I had staff who were vomiting and fainting in our beautiful skyscraper. So yea, nothing new under the sun as they mandated the poison jabs in 2021 so one could “safely work” in their windowless buildings.
I sense that McCarthy has has similar presentiments of doom that I often have when I see the childish recklessness and malevolence with which our governing class comports itself. Thanks for reading our substack, and thanks for sharing your thoughts..
Thank you John. I was moved into an emotional space that surprised me. This essay is a powerful expression of what some of us may be working hard to compartmentalize and keep our own hungry beast at bay. We are only becoming stronger and more determined to be and act in our own authority. Clint Eastwood said it best in Unforgiven, "Go ahead, make my day." Bullies don't frighten me as they are at base, cowards. They will most certainly be unforgiven!
My father was a paratrooper in WW2 who was deployed to occupy Japan soon after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He would never speak of what he experienced in that Hellish place. All he would talk about was how terrifying it was to jump out of the airplane. He wouldn't talk about anything else. He was always distant and on edge. Back then we didn't know about PTSD, we just thought we had an angry father.
I agree. I would hope to see the bomb go off before I went off a few seconds later; experience Oppenheimer's "Brighter than a Thousand Sun" from the Gita. In a sane world we would be working towards total nuclear disarmament. The trouble is that it is mostly the immoral and ruthless who get into political power. I remember going to some presentations in he UK in the early 1960s on civil defence, even then total fantasy. I was a graduate student doing nuclear physics at that time so did have a grasp of the real scale of the problem.
Brakes not breaks please fix that one.
As remembers of Womanity we need to know what the brakes are, not breaks.
That's the breaks, in life. Put the brakes on the Harmacide and leave Russia alone now.
Dr. McCullough! Thanks for the work you do! I’m a MSc. student studying immunology in Canada & help run a non profit group called “Students Against Mandates” ( https://www.studentsagainstmandates.ca ). I would love to talk with you all things science & medicine - send me an email if you have time SAM-science@protonmail.com
I’m hoping the idiots who are playing with the idea of nuclear war understand they won’t have anything left if they let it happen. Their dreams would be toast - literally and figuratively.
Tulsi Gabbard is SUCH a disappointment. She paints a distorted picture using the usual Russian talking points. She is blaming the US for attempting regime change in Russia. But she conveniently leaves out the fact that Russia attacked Ukraine first and attempted regime change there. Only months later it became clear not much will change unless there’s regime change in Russia. She conveniently leaves out the fact that it’s Putin who is threatening to use nuclear weapons against a sovereign country, NOT the other way around. I really wish she had a spine to rationally evaluate her indirect support for Russia, where civil liberties do not exist.
Perhaps you will find this report in the UK Guardian from the year 2014 interesting. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger?fbclid=IwAR1w2bIGKNu9a1LOR-UuGLObkQIPfYWQBFUSKMirWBJeS8ezRaCRB8EuppA
Why not cite someone’s opinion from EVEN more than 8 years ago in a situation that’s DRAMATICALLY changed this year? Maybe dig up something from 50 years ago to try to prop up your opinion.
I personally know DOZENS of people who are ethnic Russians who only speak Russian who lived in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions PEACEFULLY for DECADES within Ukraine who were forced to flee this year to central and western Ukraine because either their houses got bombed and destroyed by Russians or they simply do not want to end up under oppressive Russian occupation. So I urge you to simply talk to the affected people about the situation, instead of listening to the Putin appeaser Tulsi Gabbard.
Perhaps you will consider that "the situation that's dramatically changed this year" is the culmination of a reckless policy that has been planned and pursued for at least 8 years. I'm just offering a different POV on a deadly serious matter. Our government is clearly committed to waging the proxy war in Ukraine, and it seems highly unlikely that Gabbard's opinion or mine is going to change that. I sense you can rest assured that the policy you favor will continue to be the official policy. I just hope that things don't get too out of hand, thereby resulting in a nuclear exchange.
During COVID, you treated and listened to people first hand, instead of getting your opinions from the media, which was the right thing to do. But you’re falling for it in this case by listening to Gabbard, a politician/media/entertainment personality. No rational person wants a nuclear war. Ukraine isn’t invading foreign countries. Ukraine isn’t threatening anyone with nuclear weapons. It simply wants to be left alone by Russia. It’s disappointing to see people capable of critical thinking to just roll over for an invader like Putin just because he hinted at using nuclear weapons in a delusional invasion he hoped to achieve in 3 days.
The opinions stated in this piece are those of the piece’s author, John Leake, who studied Cold War history and political philosophy and lived in Central Europe for 15 years, studying continental European affairs. As always, Dr. McCullough limits his statements to medical matters, though he welcomes a multiplicity of opinions about all matters affecting mankind. Thank you for sharing yours on our Substack.
I also welcome a multiplicity of opinions about matters affecting mankind, as long as they’re based in reality. This is why I personally spoke to dozens of Russian-speaking Ukrainians - some of whom I’ve known for decades - who lived in southeastern Ukraine peacefully for decades who are first hand affected by the invasion. Meanwhile, you chose to back your opinions with opinions of politicians and entertainment personalities.
"Ukraine isn't threatening anyone with nuclear weapons" How do you know this? How do we know what has been said and what threats have been made and by whom? We don't. We can't. We only hear what they want us to hear via broken and cherry picked media releases and statements.
If I walked up to a crowed and agitated them by being an ass and then pulled out my phone when they turned hostile towards me. I could easily go home edit the footage and make the clip look like I was the one being victimized even if I instigated the whole ordeal.
I'm not saying Russia is faultless. I am saying there is no way we can be sure who is saying and doing what with such cherry picked Intel
Please look up Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia, the UK, and the US respecting its territorial integrity.
Comment too
Kissinger is evil and helped bring about current state, as evil as zbignew.
And he is not so evil as to want to end all life, that is for Biden who is too old to care.
I think the hacksxxxxines are internal nuclear bombs In side our body and they shed like radiation so we won't need nuclear weapons if we keep up gmo injects.
Also, I was born in Russia.
I wish my citizenship to US of Arrogance can stop the attack on Russia, can it?
Grasshopper Kaplan says stop the attack on nUkraine by the West, we have lost.
Let it go....
Russia won already.
So now let's end the hacksxxxine Harmacide scamdemic, the internal nuclear bombing
I've been listening to www.ttb.org for years now and one thing I've learned from Dr. McGee is that eventually "your chickens will come home to roost". It pains me to say it but America has caused so much pain and destruction with our proxy wars that eventually we will be on the losing end. We are the only nation that has used a nuke on another nation, and we did it twice. Russia is gathering it's friends and creating powerful alliances while our leaders are acting like insane bullies where nothing will ever touch them. I just don't see this turning out well for us.
We can have the Boston chimeric super-COVID and nuclear war, can't we?
Grow vegetables and ride a bike, if you can. Listen to your spirit.
Does anyone seriously think that if we allow Putin to conquer Ukraine that the Baltics and eastern European countries wouldn’t be next? and that China wouldn’t learn the lesson and take over Taiwan and perhaps other countries in south east Asia?  And once it was clear to Putin, that he could blackmail the west, what would stop him from intensifying his cyber and other attacks on western Europe and the United States? I don’t notice anyone have answers to those questions, but they need to be asked and seriously debated.
Me! Me seriously thinks than if we 'allow' Putin to defend Russia against NATO on his doorstep that yes, he'll be quite happy to leave it at that. He's just doing what he said he would if NATO got that close.
Unlike Western politicians he seems a man of his word.
You do a very fine imitation of Neville Chamberlain.
Putin isn't Hitler, the closest we have to that is Biden.
You betcha, the insanity of this whole orchestrated situation we find ourselves in now with Russia is lost on the " fortunate sons" , the elites and their useful idiot servants who believe in their own diabolical ideology. They live in their secure little world of self belief and a loathing for the rest of us....unfortunately, no ammount of personal security or money will save them or their families any more than me or mine, should those weapons be used. There will be no victor, no money and no ideology relevent to the world that will be left..... lets pray Einstein wasn't right....!🙏
"COVID-19 or Nuclear War?" -- Bio-engineered weapons can damage Humankind forever. Bombs can certainly vaporize a lot of stuff, and surviving an irradiated environment is nothing to trivialize. But bioweapons can change the Human Genome guaranteeing the permanent destruction of Humanity.
I honestly wonder about Minds that are brilliant enough to hack Nature, weaponizing it, are simultaneously so f-ing stupid as to actually do it and think there are no consequences. I believe generals who would use nukes have more respect for their weapons than do those people.
I had a dream last night..a nightmare I guess..it was upsetting but not scary. I can’t remember much but I do recall hearing a weird noise and then looking and seeing missiles flying across the sky…suddenly they started to come down towards me. I remember thinking they were nuclear and I was going to die. I wasn’t sure if it was worth trying to hide or not. I woke up about then. I’m not really into prescient dreams so I told myself "it's only a dream.." I mean the whole thing was just so unreal.
I remember being really detached about the idea of dying from the bombs..it was so odd…and I live in a remote area very unlikely to be bombed..but like you said..maybe dying faster is better? Most likely I'd be one of those trying to survive somehow.
I think the young people today simply can't grasp the concept of nuclear war and what would happen to the world and to human kind in general. We older folks grew up with duck and cover drills and seeing fallout shelter signs around us...it's more real to us somehow.