The Worry Bomb

It wasn't a bomb, but the media and government needed a snappy name for it.

It was localised and airborne but brutally effective.

No one knew where it originated, and that set off mass speculation. Was it Russia or China or some Eastern European or Middle Eastern state?

What was the aim of it?

It was destroying the country very quickly.

People affected by it sank into a blind panic and were unable to continue what they were doing.

Surgeons murdered their patients, and drivers of buses, trains and aeroplanes went mad and crashed their vehicles often aiming for crowds or population centres.

Investigation was impossible because researchers were immediately affected by the worry bomb.

If you weren't affected you were lucky, but the chances were you would be run down by a driver who had been affected by the worry bomb.

Every days things got worse, and the worry was if someone with access to the nuclear button were affected by the worry bomb, then the world would end in a nuclear holocaust.

Someone, somewhere was gloating like a Bond villain over the success of their "secret weapon".

The targets were too bothered about survival to find a solution and those that had not been targetted had their own problems to deal with.

The world was rushing towards an extermination cliff edge due to a combination of apathy, complacency and worry.

No one knew why

They never would.

The worry bomb man chuckled and laughed and the world became consumed by nuclear fire

Addendum

The song "Cherry Bomb" is almost homophonic for "Worry Bomb" and a lot of the lyrics for the Runaways song would fit if the title were "Worry Bomb"