The world ended on a Tuesday. Not with a bang—though there were plenty of those—but with the usual assortment of morons talking about “security” and “deterrence” while sipping mineral water in windowless rooms deep underground. The rest of us got fire and wind and static on the airwaves.
I survived because I was in the tub, drunk, with headphones on, listening to Coltrane’s Olé. The power cut out halfway through the bass solo and I figured I’d passed out again, but when I stepped outside wrapped in a towel and saw half the city crawling like glowing embers, I knew something had changed.
The thing about global thermonuclear war is—it has a tendency to simplify things. No more presidents, no more parliaments, no more high-speed internet to feed you curated rage. Just dust, canned beans, and the distant sound of someone else screaming into the void. You realize real fast that the only politics that matter are: Who has the last box of AA batteries? And: Can you trade a poem for a can of peaches?
Turns out you can.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
After the smoke cleared and we started picking through what was left of humanity (not much: a few jazz musicians, a bunch of stoners, an old lady who baked sourdough out of mutant wheat), people got philosophical. I mean, what else was there to do? Civilization was charred toast, and even the cockroaches looked traumatized.
So one night, around a busted-out fire pit that used to be a Tesla charging station, a guy with a nose ring and one eye named Sal said:
“You know, I don’t think anyone ever wanted these wars.”
Someone else said, “Bullshit. Humans are violent.”
And then Sal, who had once taught civics before his school was vaporized, said:
“No, think about it. All those wars? Vietnam, Iraq, Crimea, the War of the Mole People—none of ‘em were started by the people. They were started by guys in suits telling stories about the ‘enemy.’”
We chewed that over. Then another guy, drunk on distilled shoe polish, said:
“Fine. New rule: If a leader wants war, they gotta fight it themself. In a ring. With the other idiot.”
Everyone laughed. But not like before the war, when laughter was a luxury. This was a deep, dry, cracked-earth laugh. A knowing laugh.
And that was it. The Law of the Ring.
It spread like wildfire across the little clusters of survivors. You wanna go to war? Great. Step into the pit, asshole. No more sending farmers to die in deserts. No more speeches from marble balconies. Just you and the other clown in bike shorts, bare-knuckling it in front of the people you were about to murder in their name.
And guess what?
War…vanished.
Because it turns out the ones who start wars are also the ones least interested in breaking their nose for it. You tell a general he’s gotta wrestle the “enemy combatant” on live dirt TV and suddenly he’s all about diplomacy and “strategic patience.”
Some tried to cheat—send in body doubles, juiced-up gladiators—but we had a rule for that too: Cheaters get launched out of a trebuchet. Publicly. It’s amazing how clear the air gets when the consequences are real.
And for once, people stopped dying for flags, and started living for breakfasts. The kind with real eggs and decent coffee.
Even the cats looked more relaxed.
I remember sitting outside one morning, radio static finally replaced by birdsong, watching a kid draw in the dirt with a stick. She looked up and asked:
“Why did it take us so long to figure it out?”
I didn’t have a good answer. I just lit a cigarette and said:
“Because history’s a con, sweetheart. And we all bought in.”
But not anymore.
Now, we got peace.
And rings.
And plenty of goddamn peaches.
