As we prayed for peace in school assembly under the direction of the Dean, I remembered a prediction made by Field Marshall Montgomery in the late Fifties that there would be a nuclear war within a decade. Everyone, young and old alike, knew that we would have just four minutes’ warning of a nuclear attack, which would spell the abrupt end of all civilization. My mother’s comment, calmly philosophical and sensible as ever, at the prospect of a third world war in her lifetime, was that she would much rather be obliterated with everything and everyone else than endure the agony of seeing her husband and son conscripted for warfare from which they would never return.
— Travelling to Infinity (Jane Hawking), Loc. 114–8
Well said.