The Last Ten Thousand — Jay Inman

Fifty years ago, conversations during our shift in the Mountain seemed to have a macabre but sarcastic tone whenever we talked about what a really bad day looked like. In general, our definition started with how some Near-Peer nation might fly a nuke tipped rocket down the tunnel and fry our miserable hides. That one was obvious. At 50,000 degrees, a nuke popping off in the tunnel would ensure that the end would not hurt very much for very long. Then there were the terrorist wanna-be's who might lob something our way. None of us had any clue that the dumb ass Russians would attempt a third option. Using the sun to do the job, they fried half the earth from barely sunrise on the U.S. East Coast to just after sunset half-way across Asia.