XO Mafoofan shows up:

His exchanges with other commenters on Styleforum.net include questions that were posed in what clearly seems an absurd tone, to which Anton responded in a deadpan manner. For instance, there was this query from a user with the name of mafoofan: “Manton, I assume if they set off a 10kt bomb in the middle of Manhattan, the UWS is royally f*cked, right?

Anton’s reply was concise.

No, the shockwave will not reach that far. Structural damage is likely to be light. Fires may rage out of control in any and all directions, however. And fallout will depend on the weather. Thin[g]s will likely be bad, but not so bad as people assume.

Mafoofan’s response was, “Zabar’s survives!”

Not really, Anton pointed out.

The problem is that midtown will be A) erased and B) irradiated. Fallout may not hit the UWS (though it probably will) but it will contaminate much of the surrounding area. Manhattan will be useless as a cultural and business center. No one will want to live here, nor could anyone live anywhere near the contaminated areas. Human nature being what it is, even the outlying areas that are still safe, no one will want to live in. The value of the whole metro area will fall to zero, both because its center and hear[t] is literally gone, and because people simply will not want to be anywhere near it.

The playfulness that might be inferred in this particular exchange contrasts with Anton’s stone-cold theorizing about how or whether the United States might try to respond to an attack of this sort. Would the U.S. launch a nuclear counterstrike against the people who had attacked it with nuclear weapons? These sorts of questions are played out in war game scenarios, and Anton appears, in the virtual pages of Styleforum.net’s discussion forums, to be indulging in precisely that sort of planning-for-the-worst.

For instance, a commenter named montecristo#4 suggests that in order to deter the kind of attack that Anton fears, the United States would make the following threat: “You blow up a Western city, and we will turn certain Muslim holy cities to glass. We give people who live there plenty of time to evacuate, but the cities and everything in them are gone for good, and uninhabitable for hundreds of years. Surely an Islamic fundy wouldn’t want that.”

Anton responded by saying that “this has been considered, but there is presicely zero chance of it ever becoming policy, or acted upon. It would be impossible even to have the public debate necessary to make such a threat credible.”

He went on to explain his reasoning in greater detail:

The most likely scenario is the following. 10Kt bomb goes off in Times Square (or at Grand Central) around 8 am on a midweek day. We will do the “nuclear forensics” to try to get a signature from the radiation. It will prove inconclusive. At best, we can narrow the source to a handful of states. Are we going to nuke them all? Two certain innocents and one “maybe”? No way.

Let’s say we get lucky and are nearly certain we know where the fuel came from. What if it’s Russian? Are we going to risk a full exchange with Russia? No effing way. What if it is Pakistan? In all likelihood, if it is, it will not be decision made by the top but a rougue element of the ISI. Islamabad will plead for mercy. They will say — truthfully, in all likelihood — that they never meant for this to happen, and that they will in reposnse go and steamroll the NWFPs. Will we have the stomach to nuke them? No way.

What if it is Iran? They will deny it. At least half the world will believe them. Who knows how many Americans will believe them too. Some other huge % of people will say, “In the absense of proof, we can’t retaliate.” Iran will likely also say, through back channels, “This was not us, but had it been us, it would have been some rougue element, not sanctioned by the Supreme Leader. It is very terrible what happened to you, and we will do anything we can to help. But if you think of retaliating, well, we have some unpleasant surprizes for you in the form of Hezbollah sleeper cells. Oh, and forget about Israel if that happens. So just cool off and listen to reason. Let us address this problem together and put the past behind us.”

Then you will have another gigantic segment of public opinion which will say that nuclear attacks are so terrible that under no circumstances should we ever engage in them. And another big segment will say that we should not do anything that will increase the chances of another attack, and retaliation will be held up as just such a response. And, indeed, many hostile nuclear powers will tell us the same thing: Don’t do anything rash, or you may have to deal with us one way or another. And that is IF we can come up with a plausible case that one nation is responsible. The chances of that are in fact low.

No, we will not do anything.

It makes for depressing reading, as many of the members of Styleforum.net complained. “Do your friends invite you to parties anymore or do you just bum everyone out too much?” asked one. “Manton, you must be a hoot at cocktail parties, I do mean that,” wrote another. In response, Anton gave a bit of ground, writing, “I admit that it’s possible that I have too dim a view of human nature.” However, when asked by The Intercept whether he was as dark as his nuclear comments had been interpreted on the site, he replied that while he does have provisions for a nuclear attack stored in his basement, “I’m pretty happy. I like my life.”

His last post on the site was in late January, before it was publicly known that he had been named to a top spot on the National Security Council. “I had a 1981 Tondonia white last week that was great,” he wrote. “Perfect bottle.”

His profile on the site lists his current location as “In Hiding.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3529969&forum_id=2#32650217)

what a sublime, masterful, pixar-animated cartoon world we live in

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3529969&forum_id=2#32650244)