Fair Warning

What if the "human error" that sent this State into temporary thoughts of cataclysm was not mistake but  warning? What if the person who sounded the alarm had done so by deliberate action? 

In this alternate tale, there in that room sat a figure dismayed by the level of insanity that was pervasive. An Edward Snowden of sorts, a person consumed with the contemplation that we were allowing matters to escalate without comprehension, without purpose, with dark and dire consequence not mere conjecture but near certainty were not cooler and saner heads to prevail.

What if that person thought this scenario but abstraction to those who treated the concept of nuclear annihilation no more real than a game of chess, pieces to be moved around a board, a clash of egos not of melting flesh and blood?

In that moment of sheer terror when cell phones spoke of final goodbyes, when minds turned to what would never be, when what could never occur, for an instant, appeared as what was, in that tiny sliver of time, stood the breadth and depth of our insanity.

Surely we will learn that this was nothing more than a finger pushing the wrong button, followed by confusion and panic. Does this sound like an impossibility?

If not, then let this serve as fair warning to all who wait, in daily fear of what  fatal mistake may emanate from the Oval Office.

It only takes a proverbial finger.