Human nature tends to forget about unpleasant realities. “Men stumble over the truth from time to time,” Churchill said, “but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”

Nuclear warfare is one of those unpleasant realities. With the dark cloud of Cold War long over, we want to believe the nuclear threat has evaporated with it. In truth, however, nuclear capability is now more decentralized and diffuse; nuclear material has proliferated; and we live in an age of terrorism. In short, the threat has never been greater.

These facts makes a May 3 piece in the Washington Post important to note. “[M]ore than 3 1/2 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. government has failed to adequately prepare first responders and the public for a nuclear strike, according to emergency preparedness and nuclear experts and federal reports,” the article said.

The Post spoke of the government failing to exploit the life-saving potential in preparing first responders to evacuate populations that are downwind of a radiation cloud. It cited misleading information regarding nuclear attacks now appearing in Homeland Security preparedness literature. The federal Homeland Security department has trained 22,000 first responders in nuclear response out of 2 million firefighters, police officers and emergency personnel nationwide. Thus, the vast majority of those most needed in such an emergency lack education regarding radiation exposure, how to triage and decontaminate victims, and other crucial procedures. Moreover, the government doesn’t have rules and standards for organizing and assigning jobs to these workers should such a tragedy occur.

The specific gaps in American preparedness are worth addressing—after all, one certainly cannot underestimate the difference between 190,000 people dying from a 10-kiloton bomb and a death toll tens of thousands of people greater from the same bomb simply because they were inadequately prepared to react appropriately (these numbers are taken from a July 2004 Homeland Security Council [hsc] document explaining the consequences of such an attack within the nation’s capital). But what makes this report especially noteworthy is how it highlights a mindset unwilling to grapple with unpleasant realities.

Can we face the seriousness of the threat before us? A nuclear terrorist attack is not a mere possibility: Given the confluence of circumstances we see in the world today pointing toward this eventuality, we must acknowledge that it is bound to become reality.

The fact is, Americans are totally unprepared for the devastation and the permanent disruption of our comfortable lives that is about to befall us. The hsc report included the major understatement that a nuclear strike on U.S. soil “would forever change the American psyche, its politics and worldview.” Consider it. The shift that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, when a few thousand precious lives were lost, was but the tiniest taste of what awaits.

The words of the Prophet Jeremiah, directed at the modern descendants of biblical Israel—a group of nations that includes the United States—should leap out for their present significance. He wrote that “cities are burned without inhabitant.” Is it alarmist to speculate that loss of life on such a massive scale would likely include nuclear terrorism?

Perhaps this seems too unbelievable to be true. How could such a fate befall America? Before September 11, who would have believed that such terrorism could occur on U.S. soil? It was unbelievably shocking. Yet, it happened. This plague of violence is imminent. We should watch for it, so this destruction does not catch us off guard (Luke 21:36). As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, “It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” To learn how to prepare spiritually, read Herbert W. Armstrong’s article, “There Is a Way of Escape.”