It was the height of the Cold War. Russia and the United States had reached an impasse, and both were amassing large quantities of nuclear armaments. In remote part of the Nevada desert was an underground missile silo. It was designed to accommodate one full time worker. There were many of these silos throughout the country, and each was the same. The man who worked in this particular silo originally worked a military desk job, but was recently deemed psychologically fit to occupy and monitor this ICBM site.
The silo was a comfortable place. There was plenty of space for a single man, and he was resupplied every two weeks. He made always made friends with the people who brought the supplies. Once a month he was allowed visit the nearest town to socialize. He continued this routine without a second thought for three years.
In the third year he started to change. Although the process was slow; he started to become aware of the weight of his burden. The responsibility to protect the people of the United States in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack quickly became an obsession of his. Before long he started to question who he was protecting the people. How many more like him were in Russia? Weren’t the Russians people too? Was all this really over simple ideological principles?
His thoughts continued to become darker and darker. He wasn’t protecting Democracy from Communism, or citizens of one country from those of another. No. He began to believe he was protecting humanity from itself. These thoughts nagged at him day and night now. Then on one of the days he was on leave in town he had a realization. Humanity as a system was corrupt, broken, and shallow. There was only one way to fix it. To protect it. Back at the facility, in the control room, was a glass covered button. It was the emergency override. It would launch the single ICBM located there towards Russia starting a chain reaction of devastation. Upon his return to the facility he immediately went to the control room and sat down at his monitoring station, but did not stare at the radar screen like usual. Instead he was focused on the button. After hours of staring, he broke the glass case, and reached for the button.

Aside from some typos, this was excellent. Awesome work. So the guy goes nuts and wipes out all of earth's major cities. This would make a good movie.

Huh. MS Word didn't point out any typos. Except for one that I ignored. "To protect it." I made that a sentence fragment on purpose.

Was he really that crazy? I'm probably the only on this forum that thinks that.

Not spelling typos, just a few small things like "In remote part of the Nevada desert," instead of "In a remote part," and "who he was protecting the people." Nothing big. I thinks it's excellent, overall.

Lol, I wish I could wipe out some people, but not all of them. Who would I have to talk to on this site?

Well. I'm glad you like it. I've decided to actually try and write I story that I thought of over a year ago. I just came up with the idea for this story last night. Anyway. The next thing I write isn't going to be very dark, and not terribly original either.