Sometime in high school, we read the post apocalyptic short story “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét.

It was first published in 1937. Benét and his readers no doubt remembered the horror of World War I. Many already feared another war as the Nazi era began in Germany.

For us during the Cold War, it was a sober reminder of our nuclear war fears. We were the first people to know a time when human folly could destroy the planet or at least make huge parts of it unhabitable.

As we teenagers read Benét’s story, we realized, with horror, that the wasted world the young man was traveling through was ours. The city he visited was a silent, destroyed New York City.

The story has stayed with me, given me reason to rejoice when finally, in the 1990’s, it looked like the world might give up its nuclear weapons.

Now the horror of that first reading sobers us. We thought the beast was slain, but it has returned.