Writing more than a half a century ago of nuclear war, C.S. Lewis risked sounding unfeeling in order to enforce the way of wisdom:

Believe me, dear sir or madam,

you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death

before the atomic bomb was invented;

and quite a high percentage of us

were going to die in unpleasant ways .

It is perfectly ridiculous to go about

whimpering and drawing long faces

because the scientists have added one more chance

of painful and premature death to a world

which already bristled with such chances

and in which death itself was not a chance but a certainty.

 

Let that bomb when it comes

find us doing sensible and human things—

praying, working, teaching, listening to music,

bathing the children, playing tennis,

chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—

not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that)

but they need not dominate our minds.