These small-sized, ultra-precise missiles, equipped with nuclear warheads, were designed to deliver pinpoint strikes on small, but strategically important military facilities, deep bunker command posts of the enemy and jewelry hits exactly on target caused irreparable damage to the enemy. The anti-missile means of the warring parties not only failed, due to their small size and unprecedented speeds, and also, especially because of their low visibility for air defense radars, to shoot down these missiles, but did not even have time to detect and distinguish them from many other objects and space debris randomly spinning in near-Earth orbit. Due to the special electronic complexity of the designs of their targeting heads, which did not perceive other people's radio signals or radio interference at all, the means of electronic warfare against missiles were also not effective against these missiles. And not only EW-s, but even powerful anti-missile laser guns of land and ship-based, as well as special anti-missile neutron guns based on special satellites in a high geostationary orbit of the Earth, could not shoot down these missiles. Because these smart rockets during the flight for a second, at unthinkably huge hypersonic speeds, zigzagged more than three hundred meters unpredictably difficult and varied to change the trajectory of their flight. The ISS crew members watched with horror as at huge hypersonic speeds, huge ballistic missiles with powerful nuclear warheads and small-sized cruise missiles filled with nuclear warheads, fired from electromagnetic cannons, rushed to all the edges of the Globe. Several rockets even flew to the Arctic, that is, to the North Pole of the Earth and to the icy continent of Antarctica. Perhaps there were also military bases of the opponents there. At the same time, in order to achieve a final victory over the enemy, the opposing sides also used a new, the use of which is categorically prohibited, top secret, gravitational weapons in the conditions of any war on Earth. Explosions, dazzling bright lights, thousands and thousands of large and small mushrooms from nuclear explosions have grown on all continents and islands of the Earth, where military bases, strategic objects of opponents or their allies may have been located. These numerous powerful nuclear explosions and the use of gravitational weapons, in turn, served as resonant detonators for indescribably super-powerful wave earthquakes, natural disasters and man-made disasters across the entire surface of the planet. One after another, nuclear power plants, oil and gas storage terminals and everything that could explode and burn on the ground exploded and burned. From above, it seemed that super-powerful fires had engulfed the entire land surface of the Earth. Perhaps the echoes of numerous powerful nuclear explosions and the use of gravitational weapons echoed in the deep layers of the planet, as not only active, erupting volcanoes were activated along the chain, but even numerous volcanoes that had once fallen asleep, including the largest volcano Yellowstone, woke up and began to erupt. The titanic destructive forces of all these volcanoes were thousands of times more significant than all the nuclear explosions and, as a result, the man-made disasters that followed them. The oceans and seas were boiling with underwater volcanoes that had awakened in the bowels of the Earth and raged with previously unprecedented giant waves. Before the eyes of the crew, the eternal ice floes of the Arctic Ocean first broke into several parts, and then the ice floes encircling Antarctica and all these broken parts of the ice floes were rapidly moving towards the equator of the planet. And then came the moment when, as in the times of the mythical wars of the gods, huge water streams, swallowing everything into their depths, rushed from the oceans to the continents. From above, it seemed that the water element was about to swallow all the land on Earth. Meanwhile, the devastating fiery explosive waves of nuclear explosions, sweeping away and destroying everything in their path, circled the globe several times. In a word, in an instant, everything on the surface of the Earth was mixed up. It was an indescribable real hell, an apocalypse on Earth, in the literal sense of the word. Despite the futile requests of the crew, the flight control centers and all ground services in general were silent. Apparently, after the nuclear explosions, powerful electromagnetic pulses, in an instant, cut off all means of communication on Earth and it is quite possible that the ground services after that, simply for a purely technical reason, could not establish communication. Perhaps, even most likely, these services, like all other services, probably could not even survive, since, after a series of annihilatingly devastating nuclear explosions, super-powerful earthquakes that occurred everywhere on the Earth's surface, numerous small and super-powerful super volcanoes and a planetary-scale water element completed the complete and irrevocable destruction of Earth's civilization. Time passed, and the ISS with the crew on board was still spinning around the planet. And suddenly, for a moment, the Earth shuddered for a moment and seemed to make a short stop in its rotation around its axis, and then began its rotation again. A moment later, something vast, seemingly similar to a huge wide funnel, a vacuum void was formed in the Earth's atmosphere over the African continent, and an extremely critical cosmic cold poured into this part of the Earth that was not protected by the atmosphere, along with the Sun's harmful rays, radiation, in the form of a silvery haze. From above, it was visible how, due to the attraction of the planet, the cosmic cold spread rapidly on the surface of the Earth, and the already frozen and icy land surface of the whole of Africa and part of the water surface of the Atlantic mirrored and reflected the Sun's rays back from themselves. A moment later, the already polluted atmosphere of the planet again filled this vacuum void. After that, the entire Earth, up to the stratosphere, was gradually covered with thick dust from nuclear explosions and a volcanic ash pall. This meant that from that moment on, a long, critically cold, nuclear winter began on Earth, which was disastrous for biological life. All the members of the ISS crew, being in near-Earth orbit and having personally seen, as a result of the world thermonuclear war, the destruction of the Earth's civilization, not yet fully believing in it and not fully realizing the irreparable disaster that had happened to their home planet, silently looked into each other's faces. In their eyes, one could read an indescribable terrible horror, fright, confusion and deep inner heartache for what had happened and was already irreparable, a disaster on Earth, and everyone was asking questions: "How and why did this happen, who is to blame, was it really impossible to solve all sorts of issues peacefully, by agreement. Did the leaders and politicians of the leading nuclear powers, who are responsible not only to the peoples of their country, but in general to the humanity of the whole world, to the thousand-year-old Earth civilization, knowing in advance how the world nuclear war will end, how disastrously catastrophic its consequences will be for life on the planet, allow this?" A day passed, but the Earth remained dead silent. A month passed after the disaster, the Earth did not show any signs of life, as if there was only a dusty void behind the ashy fog and there was no longer a blue, beautiful planet called Earth in the endless expanses of the Universe. But all the crew members knew that she, the only and native Earth for everyone, there, behind the ash fog, did not leave her orbit, as before, continues her rotation around the Sun, turns around her axis, otherwise the Moon, her eternal companion and completely dependent on the Earth's gravity, would have left the Earth's orbit. However, the moon, as always, was still spinning, in its orbit, around the Earth. Now the crew members did not argue, did not swear and did not blame the leaders and politicians of a particular state. They silently thought about the fate of their relatives, friends, and fellow citizens, and in the soul of each of the crew members there was still a small hope that, although the scale of the disaster is immeasurably large, but the ground services of the states together will be able to localize the consequences of the disaster, because the entire thousand-year-old earth civilization could not perish in an instant. All the crew members almost all the time, without looking up from the portholes, looked out at the Earth in the hope that the ash fog was about to open, and they would see their native blue planet again, ground services would start working, and they would return to Earth. The crew members were silent and no longer discussed this topic, because each of them well understood and knew what a global thermonuclear war was and how catastrophic its consequences could be. Meanwhile, the ISS was still spinning around the Earth, all the instruments and equipment of the station were working properly. The supplies of provisions and oxygen were sufficient. But the hopelessness of their current situation, and although they did not yet know and could not even conceivably determine the scale of the catastrophe, however, the premonition of the global disaster that had already occurred on Earth, the feeling of losing their relatives and loved ones, increasingly pressed on the psyche of each of them. In addition to this, the Earth for all this time did not give any, even the slightest, signs of life and still continued to keep, a terrifying soul, a dead silence. Although there were five of them on the ISS, but they all already felt lonely and abandoned to the mercy of fate, they occasionally communicated with each other, the rest
