A whole civilization might die tonight (nbcnews.com)

88 points by hedayet 2 hours ago

jghn 2 hours ago

In a lot of ways I feel the discourse that he means a nuclear attack buries the lede. This is not likely to happen.

What is more likely to happen is just as bad. Devastating civil infrastructure would put 10s of millions of lives at risk.

And even if one were to look at this from a myopic USA centric lens, has anyone considered how many of these people we were told needed liberation are now radicalized against us?

CommanderData an hour ago

Contaminating the region with radiation including Israels supply chain and exports wasn't something on my bingo cards.

I guess Israel would just import everything from the US, and expect AIPAC to do it's job at increasing funding once it's own farming sector has been decimated.

Animats an hour ago

Response from Iran: "Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it will respond outside the region and deprive the United States and its allies of oil and gas “for many years” if the US crosses “red lines” and attacks civilian facilities."[1]

"Iran has closed all diplomatic and indirect channels of communication with the United States, the state-run Tehran Times reported ..." US media does not seem to have picked up on this, but media in India and China have.[2] But the common source seems to be "Tehran Times", and it's unclear who runs that or where they get their info. New York Times, AP, and AlJazeera are not saying that. Xinhua has a one-line note with no source. The US White House says Vance is talking to somebody. Politico says Vance is on "standby".[3]

A negotiated cease-fire seems unlikely now.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/4/7/iran-war-li...

[2] https://www.the-independent.com/bulletin/news/iran-mediators...

[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/06/vance-is-on-standby...

hedayet an hour ago

As anticipated - this post got flagged.

An existential crisis as big as this can't be discussed on HN?

srean 5 minutes ago

If many people 'vouch' for it, it will get unflagged.

twen_ty an hour ago

This is what happens when there's no effective opposition. Where are the dems? Where's the press?

msabalau an hour ago

Where are you?

What precisely are you doing other than posting stuff that pretends that a party in minority in both houses of Congress could actually stop a president, unless some politicians in the majority chose to join them.

And, as underwhelming as the press are, the facts are that surveys show that American's broadly disapprove of the war. Presumably because of what they have learned about it from the press and the opposition.

The people who are responsible are the people in power and their remaining supporters. Aided, arguably, by people who espouse cynical, self-soothing complaints that ignore what most people learn about civics in middle school.

nathanaldensr 39 minutes ago

The US government hasn't been in control of the People for decades and decades. Maybe even longer than that. It doesn't matter what "parties" have been in control. We all know why this war is happening, who benefits, who's lobbying for it, who they bought off, and who Trump answers to. We all know, but people are afraid to say it because they stand to lose once they're targeted for saying it. Voting hasn't stopped it. Party control of Congress hasn't stopped it. Presidents haven't stopped it. It's happening and this was the plan all along from both parties.

durzo22 3 minutes ago

akagusu 6 minutes ago

hedayet an hour ago

I'd also ask what can we regular Joes and Janes do to avoid this disaster?

I can't think of anything other than going out and standing on a street with a placard. can we do anything better than that?

nathanaldensr 37 minutes ago

The question isn't what must be done; look to the very founding of the United States for wisdom on that topic. The only question is, do people have the collective courage to do it?

jghn an hour ago

What are they supposed to do here, exactly?

jacquesm an hour ago

Country wide strike would be a nice start.

sheikhnbake an hour ago

jghn an hour ago

srean an hour ago

egeozcan an hour ago

crises-luff-6b an hour ago

sheikhnbake an hour ago

The fatal flaw in our separation of powers is that even if congressional dems had a super majority, congress is powerless to enforce anything.

And the press has been covering Trump's rhetoric and the war pretty heavily.

akagusu a minute ago

   > And the press has been covering Trump's rhetoric and the war pretty heavily.
 
The press is owned by the billionaires that paid Trump's campaign.

They literally bought the presidency for Trump.

lebuffon an hour ago

So the "checks and balances" we were taught in school was just nonsense?

kubb an hour ago

Mr_Eri_Atlov 12 minutes ago

sheikhnbake an hour ago

crises-luff-6b an hour ago

locknitpicker an hour ago

> This is what happens when there's no effective opposition. Where are the dems? Where's the press?

The US is functioning as a banana republic style totalitarian regime for a few years. Even Venezuela has a tougher opposition.

Barrin92 an hour ago

It's wrong to even frame this as a partisan question. When the leader of a democratic country threatens a nation of 90 million people with genocide, that should be the end of that government on that same day. Where is the entire US population? You hear nothing but crickets, what an utterly passive, terminally ill society.

sheikhnbake an hour ago

Protests have been steadily breaking records each time they occur. Protests have been occurring across the country since he took office. This has all been widely publicized

dylan604 an hour ago

The best example I've seen of things working correctly was with South Korea removing the leader that declared martial law. The South Koreans said nope to that, and removed the head of their government. They just had the moral fortitude to do it.

srean 6 minutes ago

Mr_Eri_Atlov 10 minutes ago

The world will be engulfed in nuclear hellfire, and Hacker News mods will be flagging final sign-off posts as too political.

baal80spam an hour ago

Why is the post miquoted?

It says: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

Will. Not might.

dragonwriter an hour ago

It is not quoted, it is summarized. You are quoting the first sentence of the post, but the certainty implied in that sentence is immediately undercut by the next; “I don’t want it to happen but it probably will”, and made even more muddy by the rest, which continues: “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”

baal80spam an hour ago

Thanks, I guess that makes sense.

undefined an hour ago

[deleted]

w10-1 an hour ago

Destruction for no good reason.

Even those who don't care about innocent lives recognize the horrible consequences for everyone else:

- Iran empowered to tax the strait of Hormuz indefinitely with high insurance

- Russia empowered with access to the middle east since the Iranians will have to embrace their only ally

Trump enablers are responsible.

ChrisArchitect 39 minutes ago

araes an hour ago

That went quickly from "America the supposed liberator is here" to "America is going to genocide your entire civilization."

jacquesm an hour ago

Another thread that got 'buried':

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47674286

elzbardico 2 hours ago

The world got so used to Don's deranged bravado, that I doubt that either china or russia have raised their DEFCON status equivalents, as they would probably do, should any other serious american president said the same thing.

Fucking clown.

AnimalMuppet 2 hours ago

Hmm. You just gave me a flashback to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He was saying all these threatening things, and moving all these troops, but surely he would never do that, right?

Wrong, it turned out. Sometimes bluster isn't bluster. Or perhaps sometimes blusterers back themselves into a corner with their mouth.

LinuxAmbulance 2 hours ago

Yeah, good luck with that.

I'm sure he'll follow up with bailing the ocean.

iwontberude 2 hours ago

I take this seriously and it's made me sick. I can't get any work done when my stomach feels like its doing flips.

pesus 2 hours ago

You're not alone. I keep hoping there's some sort of fire to put out at work so I can at least be distracted enough for a bit.

TimorousBestie an hour ago

I’ve approved like a single PR today. It’s not great.

jfrororkforor an hour ago

Yet another genocidal threat. Now Iran needs nukes. Congratulation on amazing diplomacy!

elzbardico 2 hours ago

[flagged]

hedayet 2 hours ago

USA has enough firepower to kill millions of people in short to mid term without needing any nukes.

10xDev an hour ago

Israel is currently discussing a Hiroshima / Nagasaki model.

Pay08 an hour ago

Source?

10xDev an hour ago

jghn 2 hours ago

Taking down the power grid, water supply, and other types of things doesn't require nukes and would devastate the populace.

zulux 2 hours ago

[flagged]

sheikhnbake an hour ago

I hate to break this to you, but before the current regime, the Shah was violently enforcing no burka/niqab dress codes. The Shah that was installed by the West

TimorousBestie an hour ago

> Women get acid in the face for dressing wrong, and protesters are killed in the thousands. Gay people are thrown from rooftops or hanged.

By your standards, civilization in the United States has been dead for a long time and shows no signs of revival.