I'm trying to recall a short story I read about 10 years ago in English class in school. It would probably be fair to call it "sci-fi", but I'm not sure how important that is.

What I remember: the story was set in the midst of an escalating arms race, Cold War-style, and the characters were chiefly military personnel (I think).

At some point, a chief actor obtains technology that is designed to (from memory) "disintegrate all weapons (certain materials/metals?)" within a vicinity.

I believe the technology is then used, and what ensues is a world-enveloping nuclear winter. I'm not sure how the weapons disintegration tech leads to a nuclear winter. It's also quite possible that I'm conflating two separate stories I read in that class.

Anyone have any idea what short stories I could be thinking of? This would be at the very latest pre-2010 stuff, and knowing my English teacher (old bloke from Yorkshire) probably 20th century. Probably.

Inspired by the post on HN, was curious about your favorite memories or nostalgia you feel about internet in the 90's or even earlier.

I really didn't come fully online until the early 2000's. We didn't have the means to get internet at home so until I could get online unless it was at school. Even so my most pleasant memories were spending time playing games on yahoo (yahooligans), with a tetris like clone being my favorite. Also spent a huge amount of time playing macromedia shockwave based games on various sites that I don't remember anymore. I do remember playing a game where you had to build up your hobo soap box car to see how far you could jump it.

It was soon followed by the discovery of various chat groups, making up identities, lying about age, revealing too much personal information in the process. At one point I even convinced a woman to send me photos that she claimed were for her modeling career. Not sure if it was some creepy old guy trying to lure me in with promises of being a real woman or if I legitimately fooled some poor girl into sending me modeling pictures.

Also remember my first foray into fan theory sites with the show LOST, ended up getting chewed out for suggesting a theory that was apparently well known. Was too embarrassed and scared to post after that and ended up lurking for the duration of my time there.

Some folks say that the "old internet" is now gone with the likes of reddit and Youtube, but for me it seems like what really changed was us and the sense of wonder. For those who are still discovering the internet as they're growing up, that sense of wonder is still there just waiting to be turned into nostalgia as they get older.