[ WP ] The year is 2065 . The world still reeling from nuclear fallout , a surviving veteran chronicles how a 2014 Hollywood movie taunting North Korea ignited World War 3 .

`` He has it wrong you know.'' The new guy said softly. 
 
 `` Oh?'' I asked, thinking nothing of it. The new guy was always quiet. He was handy enough with the machines though so everyone had voted to let him stay. 
 
 `` It was n't the Muslims.'' He said. `` The Christians all say it was the Muslims because they are an easy target. But it was n't.'' 
 
 `` So I've been told wrong my whole life?'' 
 
 `` When has anything in your life been as simple an answer as the story that man just told?'' 
 
 `` You got a point there.'' 
 
 Silence stretched and the new guy savored his beans. The new ones were always like that, savoring each meal. 
 
 `` So what makes you an expert then?'' 
 
 `` You might have noticed the color of my hair.'' It was a saying to show someone was your elder. The man was completely bald. 
 
 `` Right right. You lived through it. All the glorious years, where those huge buildings were full of food and most people never had to farm or even deal with animals. Where water was safe to drink and people cried when they entered buildings. Blah blah blah.'' 
 
 The old man chuckled. 
 
 `` Yes. I cried last week when we came upon that super-center. I stood there at the main doors remembering how much food was shipped, stored, and sold in that building and I cried. Not for myself you understand, but for you and your brother, little Maggie and the new born. You will never know the freedom and ease of that life. Never know the benefits of refined petroleum and how much work was done with machines. You might one day come to understand what you'll never have but not in any meaningful way. That's why I cried. And I guess it does n't matter what you believe anyway. If you come to some Muslim group they will try to kill you as quickly as you will try to kill them. Or for any group for that matter.'' 
 
 `` Say I want to know.'' 
 
 `` Do you?'' 
 
 I could barely nod. I did want to know. I wanted to drive a car and sit in air conditioning. I wanted to eat cakes and drink beers and watch TVs and play movies. I wanted to spend my days sleeping instead of worry about how I would survive. I wanted the life the old folks talked about. 
 
 `` He said it was because of a movie but that's not entirely true. There was a movie. And the outrage that it was n't shown. That some superpower would bow to a tiny dictator. Then it was shown and people paid attention. Not to the movie but to the claims of who hacked what. The ISP in north Korea was too small to transfer the data. Investigations showed Russia was involved, not Russian hackers but the government itself. So we pushed back. Cheap oil from the Dakotas and the new pipeline snaking through the western united states meant a lower interest in ethanol. Corn boy. It does n't matter. Gas prices were down so corn prices went down too. Government bought it and shipped it out to Russia, even subsidized it to cheapen it further, a practice to destabilize trade we learned and tested in Africa some years before. Russians bought imported food instead of locally grown stuff. Germany angry with the price of natural gas imported from Russia chose that time to squeeze and switch their supply to Turkey. China made a move as well changing their agreement with Russia to deal in Chinese yuan. China started to let the Yuan float against other currencies.'' 
 
 I indicate I have no idea what he is saying. He sighs takes another bit of food before he continues. 
 
 `` Long and short of it is this. The influx of real cheap corn meant the local Russian farmers could not sell their crops. They began to default on loans. The gas companies who leveraged the constant demand from Germany were left with too much supply and not enough income. Then began to default as well. The Chinese yuan was the straw that broke the camels back. It got so bad so quickly that the president of the United States went on air to tell the world that the Russian economy would rebound, that the mighty USA was lending money to Russia. It did n't help. Countries like Argentina did what they always did in times of finical uncertainty, defaulted on loans when they thought they could get away from it. Soon before anyone knew what was happening the delicate web of finical connectivity had fallen apart.'' 
 
 `` That was the end of the world, but like a man stabbed in the stomach the world did n't know it was dead. I do n't know if anyone could tell you who pushed the button that launched the ICBMs or if they could if I'd believe them. But it happened. People actually pulled together at first. It could have went to shit right off. Roving bands of nomads, raping, looting, burning, etc. But it did n't do that right away. At first when we still had transportation things looked like they might pull through. But shelves only carry so many antibiotics and birth control pills, suppliers only hold so much fertilizer and insecticides. And let's face it, at no other time in history was the population of this country dumber.'' 
 
 `` You laugh boy but we old folks are serious when we tell you most people could not feed themselves. That they did n't know how to garden or even when to sow seeds. Hell, most did n't even know how to collect seeds or hunt without bait piles and ammunition. Society broke down. And as history shows us, the people who should have been leading us, the thinkers, the do-ers; they were to busy trying to fix things. So instead we got the preachers and the hope-sellers. It's far easier to come together to hate your neighbor than it is to come together to try to love them. So we broke apart into smaller and smaller groups. People survived in small walled off areas killing anyone who wandered in. Over time the groups grew or allowed others, some raided, some defended. Women on the whole got fucked, both figuratively and literately. It was a dark period of human history.'' 
 
 The new guy got quiet for a time, then he looked up with sad eyes. 
 
 `` But that was a different life. You can believe it was a movie that started it all, or that a guy walked on water and lived in the time of dinosaurs, or did n't. It does n't change the facts that we have to live with today.''
