The year was 2032 on a wintry December night as the snow drifted down the mountainside in a beautiful harmonious flurry as the snowflakes fell. Snow blew gently in the wind as the crisp frosty air grew colder by the minute as the snowstorm gathered across the city.

The nations were at war and every night I went to bed with the ever-drowning worry of a nuclear bombing like everyone else in the country these days. I was fortunate enough to live in the beautiful mountains of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

One reason I loved it here were the majestic views of the mountainsides throughout the seasons. No matter the weather or season here in the mountains there was beauty around me, like the White Fir and its light blue-green evergreen needles that had a silvery glow in the morning sunrise. It was the beauty you only saw living on the mountainside, a place unlike anywhere else in the world I had seen. I had been to nearly 36 states and 4 different countries. This beauty was unmatched in the world to me.

With this beauty came the risk of living near a city that was also one of the primary targets for a nuclear attack. One of the major reasons Colorado Springs was a nuclear target was because we had both Schriever Air Force Base and Peterson Air Force Base. And if you knew anything about the United States of America back in 2032, you would understand and know that Schriever Air Force Base was the home of the 50th Space Wing of the Air Force Space Command which provided command and control for over 250 defensive, offensive, navigational, and communications satellites for the Department of Defense. Also, Schriever was home to the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center along with the main control point for the Global Positioning System also known as (GPS) which was vital in the war for helping soldiers navigate and enabled the U.S. military and its allies to distinguish friendly soldiers from the enemy.

Now Peterson Air Force Base was home to the (NORAD) or North American Aerospace Defense Command which provided an aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection for Northern America. Both bases were crucial for the war and if the enemy crippled or destroyed one of these bases, it would shut down a major defense for the United States Military and its allies. And as a result, we might lose the war. The world was an unfamiliar place than what we once knew back in the 2020s.

If the world lost a majority of the population in the nuclear bombings, every nation would lose and there wouldnt be any victors. The world would be in irreversible destruction, farming land would be infertile, and the overall population of survivors left on land would slowly die off from radiation poisoning or worse. And the only survivors left would be those surviving in bunkers around the world.

I lived in an unfamiliar world. What I once knew about society had been forgotten. The world was at war; the economy had already collapsed, and over 52.4% of the population was out of jobs in the country. Never in the history of the United States has there been an unemployment rate so high. It was the highest that had been recorded since 1933 during the Great Depression nearly 100 years ago. Back then the United States had an unemployment rate of 24.9%. And in less than 100 years the United States had more than doubled the unemployment rate. The country was in an unprecedented era, the entire world was. I lived in a generation where civilization wavered for decimation across the globe.

The United States just like every other nation was on the brink of a government collapse. At which point, if it did, riots would break out once again throughout the nation. If it wasn't already bad enough, we had protests and riots against the president's war decisions. The unemployment rate was so bad that people blamed the president for the poor funding on the war, which led to ten and a half-trillion dollars in debt. Some even blamed it on the missile defense satellites project that the citizens thought was a waste of money. It took nearly four trillion dollars and ten years to complete and launch nearly 50 new high tech defensive satellites in orbit for the United States and its fifteen allies.

Ultimately, the project put the nation in an excessive amount of debt too many other nations. Because of the debt nuclear war was building up as nations fought over the debts owed that some nations couldn't pay or refused to pay. With nuclear tension so high, it was just a matter of time before a rogue nation broke the No Nuclear Weapons War Agreement Treaty.

If any nation launched a nuclear weapon, it would cause a worldwide nuclear catastrophe. It would be a chain reaction of missile launches within seconds as every nuclear weapon carrying nation would target and fire their nukes on enemy nations in retaliation. As a result, if one nuclear weapon got fired from any nation, it would be a worldwide nuclear apocalypse.

So like everyone, every night I went to bed praying for some resolution to the war. Hoping to find peace in the world that seemed to only be falling apart day by day. And those dreams and hopes of a stable and bright future seemed to be slipping farther out of sight in my dreams since that was where they all started anyway.

All of my life from what I could remember from my earliest first memories were war and destruction; worry and pain; and more death than Ive seen life in the fourteen years that Ive been alive.

Every night I prayed to God if even there was one; as I doubted the existence of a God. But I prayed every night for peace before I rested my head down on my soft cotton pillow. And like always, my anxiety lasted briefly and the thoughts that consumed my mind slipped away. I hoped to get one night of peaceful sleep, but most likely there would be no success.

I laid on my side towards the window wrapped up in my fleece blanket. My eyes drooped heavily as they struggled to stay open as I got tired. I fought my sleep as always. And before I realized, the next thing I would wake up to remember was black.