A Mere Explosion

A Nuclear Explosion over Seoul

The intense excitement aroused in me by what is known at the time as a 'Mere Explosion' has compelled me to pen it down. An event for which the world showed their so called sympathies and consolidations. Withal, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my child and my new family of those who were known to be 'The Survivors', to write an account of the whole event. This, I hope, will help a bit to decrease the lust for the accumulation of nukes. I will therefore briefly set down the circumstances which contribute to my being experienced that dance of death.
I am an American national. For my higher education, I moved to Seoul, South Korea to pursue post graduation and a Doctorate. In the year 2006 I took my degree of Doctorate in Nuclear Physics which was known to be the toughest course of the university of Seoul. During my studies I met Jason, a student of microbiology in the same university. We became good friends and soon our friendship turned into a relationship. We married in the final year of our Doctorate course. A year later we had a daughter whom we named Susana. She was just two years old when there happened certain misunderstandings between me and my husband. We broke off, but didn't took divorce. Jason left both of us and moved somewhere else. After my break up with him, I applied in different companies for a job and it took 2 years to get so. In those 2 years I decided to work for myself and I wrote a couple of scribbles on nuclear physics. I got a job in a nuclear plant located 250 miles northwards of my hometown, which was a pacifying relief to me as writing wasn't doing that good to earn enough bucks to sustain my living. I soon grew into prominence at my workplace and got promoted to a post of senior supervisor. For me, my job was the best work I could have done as it was in my own field of interest and the basic necessity for everyone was a couple of bankrolls that I produced enough for a modest family comprising me and my ten years old daughter Susana.

[21st July, 2017]
These were those days when the nights were used to be full of twinkling green-red lights and the roads were full of mammoth battle machines. The only sound all around was that of blasts of shells and roarings of jets. There was a war going on between the two erstwhile rivals, the North Korea and the South Korea. I was at home watching television with my daughter in a hope to hear any news of a proclamation of a ceasefire. But no any other news came along on the screen except the intensifying of the war flashed. An American satellite had spotted a battery of short range nuke delivery missiles, which was being moved towards the disputed boundary line. Americans had warned Seoul to be prepared for an emergency as there were signs of a possible nuclear attack. America was not able to defend Seoul as the North Korean were being backed by China and some other South Eastern Nations loyal to China. Being a Nuclear scientist, I had the knowledge of Survival during a nuclear apocalypse, but I started recalling them hurried as if the dirty bomb was already been kindled. After watching the news I took Susana and tiptoed towards the bedroom to have a sound rest.

[22nd July, 2017]
A loud siren made me wake up early in the dawn. It was still dark, but the road was occupied with numerous searchlights and lights from the lamps of hundreds of vehicles. A loudspeaker sounded,"There is a threat to the public. You are advised to evacuate the city forthwith.Pack your bags and go towards the South as far as you can and as soon as you can". Washington had clearly stated that North Korean was about to burn down the missile. I ran indoors and started looking for all the necessary items which could assist me during the upcoming hell days. Initially I thought of waking my daughter up but I didn't do so, for I knew that my daughter was my only weakness and her presence around me would get me more upset. I took some packed food stuffs like powdered milk, oats, honey, dried fruits and canned noodles and sealed water bottles, and packed them in a handbag. After taking some other materials of utility like plastic sheets & tapes, Cell phone, goggles, flashlights & batteries and a temporary dust mask made of woollen & cotton fabrics, I sped towards my daughter to get her up.
"Get up honey. We need to go immediately", said I in a bold and hurried voice.
"But.... But where Mom. Where are we leaving for?", asked Susana.
I hadn't that much of time to explain her the circumstances. I asked her in commanding word to get up. We both had just touched the main door when a sharp shock wave hit us.I asked Susana to sit down on her knee and cover her ears with her hands. The blow was so hard that it was enough to make me feel the strength of the bomb. I knew that the heat wave would be hitting us in few seconds.Grabbing the hand of Susana and picking up the bags I ran like hell towards the lawn where my car was parked. At this time I was thinking,"why I am rushing towards the car if the the heat waves are going to hit us soo soon"? I stopped suddenly when my eyes spotted a hole in the ground. It was the opening of a dumped section block of the main drainage tunnel. It was the only thing that brought a brilliance of hope over my face. In excitement I ran towards it and threw light down the hole. It was a large metallic cylinder fully empty and fixed feets below the ground. Without wasting the time anymore I dropped the bags down and we both jumped in. I shunted the metallic lid tightly.
A second or two later, I heard a draconian sound of the blast which shook the ground. The heat outside there could be felt even being inside that cell. Then came the hell rain which we called BLACK RAIN in nuclear physics. The burning black shoot having deadly radioactive fission products with enormous temperature was raining. I knew that anyone outside would be charred to death and those who had escaped the death would get even more worst slow death due to the radioactive contamination. I hugged my daughter with all the energy I had. I couldn't help myself to stop me anymore. I brusted out in tears. At that time the only thought in my semi conscious mind was the well being of my daughter and Jason. I couldn't afford to loose them for the world.
For the first I had been that much worried for my hubby. I wished if everything were right, he would have been with me. Though we were far apart but my feelings were yet with him. This is was time when I was missing someone so heatedly. As the black rain stopped I slightly opened the lid carefully and put some woollen clothes there to let the filtered air pass into the pipe. This was essential for our inhalation.
I didn't know when we both fell asleep, but when I woke up it had been more than eight hours. Susana was still sleeping and there was an abnormal lull all around. It seemed as if nothing had happened at all. I dug out some earth from the corner of the sewer pipe which we were to use as a lavatory. We used only canned and packed food for our survival. Susana asked me,"Mom, when are we going to meet father"?
I don't know why she asked such a question, for she had never asked anything about her father.
"We will soon meet him honey", said I pensively.
I started looking up for the ways to get out of the spot. I knew it would take at least 9-10 days to make the condition suitable to step out of the pipe. The concentration of the radioactive matter would be thinned out in this much time as almost everything in nature absorbs radiation.
For those ten days, our schedule was same. In more and more time we slept. Every food stuff was to be eaten after washing it with bottled water and nothing was left uncapped. Though there was too much heat inside the sewer, but we used to were more and more apparel. The newer clothes were worn closer to the body and the older ones were put on over them. I had been conceiving of the others who might have survived the attack. Then to mind there came the thought of my fellows. They too knew how to survive such crisis and then I got the only place where they could be putting up. It was a planetarium which was in a marketing complex near my abode. The planetarium was built underground, having three feet wide roofs which could turn out to be a perfect shield against the radiation. This was the only place which could be used as a shelter and moreover there was a grocery store which could be the source of their nutrient supplements. I had been drawing plans to get there and was only waiting for the 10th day.

[1st Aug, 2017]
Lastly, it came the 10th day and I carefully opened the lid. I and Susana had put on a blanket, goggles and the dust mask to avoid radiation. To my astonishment, it was too cold out. There was a nuclear winter and the sky was totally dark. It was too tough to see anything. Everywhere were dead bodies wrapped in black soot. The half burnt bodies seemed like if they have been dipped in coal tar. This was the most horrific scene I have even come across. I moved towards the Palm street where that planetarium was situated. Picking up a wrench, I started beating the metallic handle of the door which was locked from inside.
The door opened and a beard man stood there. It was Jason, my hubby. I couldn't explain the joy that I was feeling at that moment. It was the best moment of my life that I was living then with him. I hugged him tightly and I don't recall for how long we have been clinging to each other. I was dumbfounded that moment. I made my way in and I found a group of around 70 souls putting up there. Most of them were the normal civilians who were rescued by my colleagues. Jason had come up there looking for me and he had a hope that I will get there shortly.
"Where is daddy Mom?", asked Susana enthusiastically. And before I could answer, she was in the lap of his father. For the first time I had seen Jason so happy.

[14th Aug, 2017]
It has been 23 days since the dirty bomb went off. I am putting up with my family, colleagues and others in the planetarium. The EMP waves have destroyed all the communication setups and we have been totally dissected from the outer world and no one is cognizant of our existence. For the world, it is a' Mere Explosion' and after some years the modern history textbooks of students will have a new chapter of the Korean war and the nuclear bomb quite the same as that of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. The world will show their so called gratitude and there will be some seminars and conferences where the world leader will advertise themselves by showing their heartiest sympathies for us, but no one will ever understand the predicament of all those whom they call 'The Survivors'.

The Cursed Land of Afghanistan

The soil of Afghanistan has been known to be cursed. The history itself has been an evidence of the fact. There have been a number of invasion attempts but none of them became successful. It appears as if the land is protecting itself from being ruled. It doesn't even permit the natives to rule it. Let's look back in history to validate the fact of its being cursed.
The archaeological evidence establishes that the urban civilization mushroomed in the region between 3000 and 2000 BC. The Iranian Achaemenian Dynasty controlled the area from 550 BC until 331 BC before a prominent warrior set out for his dream of conquering the whole part. And that warrior, Alexander the Great, defeated the Achaemenian emperor Darius III between 331 and 327 BC, and smashed local resistance. Alexander and his successors brought Greek cultural influences to the region. Shortly thereafter, the Mauryan Empire of India gained control of southern Afghanistan. The Mauryans brought it up with Buddhism. In the mid-third century BC (60s–375 AD), nomadic Kushans established an empire and built it a cultural and commercial core. The Kushan Empire ended in the third century AD and until the seventh century, the region was fragmented and under the general or say nominal protection of the Iranian Sassanian Empire.
Then came the time for Arabs to try their fate on the cursed land. In 642 AD, the Arabs overran the entire region. They introduced Islam in a hope to morph the land according to them. Arab rule gave way to the Persians, who mastered the area until conquered by the Turkic Ghaznavids in 998 AD. Following Mahmud's short-lived dynasty, various princes attempted to dominate sections of the country. The Mongols invaded it in 1219 which was led by Genghis Khan. Following Genghis Khan's death in 1227, there came a bloody struggle between petty chiefs and princes for supremacy until late in the 14th century, when one of his descendants, Tamerlane, incorporated Afghanistan into his own vast Asian empire. In 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani, by his veteran diplomacy, and courage, unified the Pashtun tribes and created the Durrani Empire, which is reckoned the beginning of modern Afghanistan.
In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state buffer between the British Indian Empire and the Russian Empire. On August 19, 1919, by the end of the third Anglo-Afghan war, the country regained complete independence from the United Kingdom. A brief foray into democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded the ground of Afghanistan in 1979 to support the frail Afghan Communist regime which eventually ignited an already fuming situation which resulted in a long and destructive war. Under relentless pressure from internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin rebels the USSR was forced to call back in 1989. After a subsequent series of civil wars, in 1996 Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban, a hard-line Pakistani-sponsored movement that was articulated to be emerged in 1994 to end the country's civil war and anarchy.
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a US, Allied, and anti-Taliban Northern Alliance military action toppled the Taliban for sheltering Osama Bin Laden. NATO forces lead by US did some successful operations against Taliban in order to secure peace in the region, but The UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001 established a process for political reconstruction that included the adoption of a new constitution. In December 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. The National Assembly was inaugurated the following December. After gaining a second term in 2009, Karzai's presidency came to an end in 2014. The Afghanistan presidential election of 2014 was controversial, and despite UN supervision there were many allegations of fraud. After a second round of balloting, the two front-runners, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah Abdullah, came to a power-sharing agreement.
But again this didn't bring any good to the explosive situation persisting there, for there still exists a threat of Taliban. The US and British forces are to completely evacuate from the arena.
Hence it can be easily sounded out as if the curse is still persistent there and it is still preventing the land to be ruled either by any extremist force or by a viable democracy.
I personally believe that the world may fail to shoot down the Islamic State Terrorists but this cursed land will do it easily. The Islamic State militants will meet their final destiny in this land because the chronicle has been evident of the effect of the curse on some of the mightiest forces whoever tried to control the its soil.

A Tale of Two Sides

Author: Read the story till the end to get the reality behind the incident

"Weapons are made to harm others, but it is a soldier who uses it to ensure peace."

[Somewhere in Handwara close to LOC, Jammu, India]
Ghalib sitting on a rock spoke aloud to his men,"Bismillah-ar-rehman-ar-rahim, We'll eliminate all those who disbelieve and kill our brother warriors. Allah himself has directed us in Sura 8:12 which reads, 'I will cast terror into the heart of those who disbelieved, so strike upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.'"
"Allah-O-Akbar, May Allah give us success in our mission. ", a loud cry came of the three men who were accompanying Ghalib. He stepped down the rock and commanded his team to push into the area.

[Border surveillance room, Military headquarter, Jammu, India]
Footage from a night vision-motion sensor camera flashed on the screen. An operator exclaimed,"Here's a suspicious movement in the area. Ah.... They are having 47s. It's an infiltration."
The other operator quickly rang up the commanding officer. The CO rushed to the room and assessed the situation and called for an a special forces team in the emergency room. Behind the locked door, he addressed the team.
"Guys, here we have got an emergency situation. There are some hostilities spotted on the north of Handwara close to LOC. We need to take 'em out before they do any harm on our side", explained the CO.
The team was ferried to the area on a chopper and was dropped on the ground zero.
Once spotting the terrorists, the commandos took their first shot gunning down a tango. The gunshot broke the deadly silence of the woods. Terrorists fired some shots, but it seemed as if they were shot in the air.

[Border post along Handwara, Pakistan]
"Well, I have a good news to tell.", said Nasir, a Pakistani border guard who was patrolling along with his companion. "My sister's marriage has been fixed with a guy serving in Air force."
"Hum, Now that's something pleasant", said Salman, Nasir's companion. "Am I getting a treat from you?"
Before Nasir could say a single shot of word, a bullet hit his right leg, making him fall on the ground. Salman also couched down covering his head.
"Shit, those scum Indians has attacked us", said Salman, taking out his radio to inform the border post.
Soon after getting the message from Salman, the Pakistani border post gunner sprayed bullets from his heavy machine-gun targeting posts on the Indian side.

[Border post, Handwara, Jammu, India]
The heavy firing from Pakistan had resulted in the killing of a soldier and wounding three. The message from the headquarters on the radio sounded,"They have violated the ceasefire again. We must respond to them with equal calibre weapons, for they are giving cover to those infiltrators."
Soon the rattles of machine guns and bursting of mortar shells could be witnessed on both the sides.

[A village close to border, Pakistan]
A heavy causality was being witnessed in the village. Everybody was in their house except a young lad of 17, Salim, who had a strong desire to join the Army. He lay on his chest and gazed from the edge of his terrace to see the firings. It was a pleasure for him to watch the sky full of red hot bullets being exchanged which looked like if thousands of fireflies were flying with a supersonic speed tearing apart the air and leaving a red hot tail behind them. His father was calling him down, but he was listening to none, for he was dreaming of himself using those weapons.
A couple of minutes later his younger sister Nafisa came running up the stairs to call him down. Salim turned around and saw her sweet sister closing towards with an expression of care on her face.
Salim shouted, "Get down Naf....". Before he could complete his sentence a bullet hit her and the next second she was on the ground moaning with pain. Salim ran like hell towards her and rushed her downstairs holding her in his arms. The last sound that came from her was a frail voice like that of a neigh of a horse. Nafisa was dead!
The incident affected Salim so deeply that his interest in Army died. He was now an India-hater and wanted to take her revenge. He vowed to join the army of liberation, a terrorist organisation!

[A village in Handwara, Jammu, India]
Sima was in her bedroom feeding her two years old child when she heard those rattles and blasts. She jumped off the bed and ran towards the main door to lock it. After locking the door, as she turned back a draconian sound of an ambush came. She rushed back to the bedroom but was shocked seeing what had happened. The wall adjoining the bedroom had fallen on the bed. The partially visible bedsheet turned red with the oozing blood of her child.
For Sima her life was finished. Her husband was hit by bullets last year during such a cross border firing. The soul hope for her was her child, which was no more now. She took a broken piece of glass scattered on the floor and slit the artery of her left arm.

[Meeting hall, Military headquater, Jammu, India]
Over the centre table, the two newspapers of the two sides were placed. One reads,"Heavy firing by the Indian on the border near Handwara." The other asserts,"Again a ceasefire violation by Pakistan; Indian forces gave a befitting reply." A brigade level talk was going on. Both the commanders assured each other to carry out an investigation into the issue. Sweets were exchanged and the meeting ended without reaching on a common viable conclusion.

[..... Six months later, Pakistan]
The final report of the incident came after a vigorous investigation. The report was submitted to the office of the Military Commander. The report reads,"The bullets found in the leg of Mr Nasir was of an Ak47 and was not made in India. So it's clear that the bullet wasn't fired from the Indian posts as the range of AK47 is not enough to make the bullet reach on Pakistan's side with such a force. It has perhaps been fired from the woods."

Indian special forces carried Tar Tavor which uses a different bullet. So it was evidently clear that someone else had fired those shots at the Pakistan's Border Guards!
..... During the cross border firings, the Indian special forces team was evacuated from the area. This proved to be a nice opportunity for Ghalib and his men to get away. The terrorists were now hiding somewhere in the village waiting for their chance to dismantle the peace of the region.
The incident had devastated the lives on both the sides. It created a new Ghalib and a mother died watching the blood of her soul piece.

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