There have been many frightening stories circulating about AI-powered robots that could potentially cause harm and natural disasters that could wreak havoc. However, the threat of a nuclear apocalypse should not be underestimated.

Despite the concerns about killer robots, the real danger lies in the rise of China, the aggression of Russia in Eastern Europe, and the belligerence of North Korea. According to experts cited by the Daily Mail, these factors could lead to nuclear warheads being unleashed on the United States, which is largely unguarded.

Recognizing the severity of the situation, President Donald Trump wasted no time in addressing the issue. One of the first executive orders he issued upon assuming office was related to the placement of interceptors in space to create a protective ‘shield’ capable of shooting down any incoming nuclear threats.

In his congressional address this week, he called it a ‘state-of-the-art golden dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland.’ 

It borrows from Israel’s Iron Dome system, he says, but will be ‘all made in the USA’ and be the first step in ‘building the most powerful military of the future.’ 

Trump likens the plan to his predecessor Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative — the hoped-for 1980s ‘Star Wars‘ program of space-based high-energy beams that never quite materialized.

Technology has come a long way since then, says the president. 

Now, he has an ally in tech-geek Elon Musk, who’s adept at getting satellites into low-earth orbit for a fraction of what it used to cost.

But, for all Musk’s expertise, it is still not not clear whether it will feasible or affordable to defend against all intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), cruise missiles, and hypersonic weapons that could one day come America’s way.

It certainly isn’t encouraging that the US has in recent decades spent billions of dollars on nuclear-missile defenses with little to show for it — leaving folks from Alaska to Florida especially vulnerable to nuclear salvos from overseas.

And the prospect of even a single one-megaton thermonuclear weapon reaching the homeland is beyond terrifying, recently declassified official documents show.

A detonation would begin with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend — five times hotter than at the center of the sun.

Within seconds, thermal radiation would have deeply burned the skin on roughly one million people. 90 percent of them will die. 

But if Trump’s dome becomes reality, that threat would diminish.

It would also upend the balance of global power, embolden America, and encourage its adversaries to rethink their defense postures.

‘We’re in a dangerous world right now,’ says Rebecca Gibbons, an expert from the University of Southern Maine.

‘Russia and the US are suspending arms control, China’s building up — a disaster shouldn’t be the reason that we realize we need a better security environment for ourselves and others.’

Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ idea never got off the drawing board, sucking up billions of dollars without yielding any of the warhead-downing space lasers it envisaged.

The US has since created a Ground-Based Midcourse Defence (GMD), which relies on interceptors in Alaska and California that have the ability to parry a small number of ballistic missiles.

Trump’s shield plan is much grander and, he says, would be able to halt ‘any foreign aerial attack’ on the homeland, up to and including a barrage of hundreds of missiles from Russia or China at once.

Moscow controls an arsenal of 1,250 deployed nuclear weapons, and China’s stockpile is growing fast.

Even North Korea may be able to fire at least a few long-range nukes at the US.

Such long-range missiles come with decoys and other penetration aids and travel at epic speeds of 15,500mph or faster.

Stopping them is unfeasibly challenging, often likened to ‘hitting a bullet with another bullet.’

Swerving hypersonic missiles and some types of cruise missiles are harder still to target.

GMD’s alone wouldn’t stop them, as they only hit incoming missiles in mid-flight.

Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ air defense system falls short, too — it only knocks out low-level targets, rockets, mortar shells and cruise missiles over a short range.

Trump’s directive envisages defending the vast continental US, which spans four time zones.

It calls for lots of small, armed ‘space-based interceptors’ to lurk above China, Russia and other foes and destroy ICBM’s in the minutes after they launch.

That was impossibly costly and tricky in the 1980s, but the price of putting thousands of satellites into orbit has sharply reduced in recent years.

Musk’s Space X has revolutionized the sector with its reusable Falcon rocket, slashing launch costs from tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram to mere thousands.

It’s not clear whether Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is cooperating on space lasers with Musk, who is now a ‘special government employee’ charged with cutting bureaucratic flab.

Still, getting hundreds of such military satellites into orbit would quickly sap the Pentagon’s $850 billion-a-year budget.

Henry Sokolski, a veteran Pentagon staffer who now heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, says thousands of interceptors would be needed in low Earth orbit to make a difference.

The plan also relies on untested innovations.

The satellites would have to be able to consistently spot, track, and guide interceptors to enemy missiles and destroy them — and this remains a challenge for engineers.

Some work is already in progress.

The US Missile Defense Agency recently awarded Lockheed Martin a $2.8 billion contract to develop more Terminal High Altitude Area Defense ground-based weapon systems, which knock out short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

The US Space Force, established in 2019 by Trump in his first term, would be a key part of the missile shield along with the US Strategic and Northern commands.

Frank Miller, a former Pentagon senior official, says military chiefs are doubtless ‘cobbling together’ plans involving existing and new ground and space-based systems for Trump to choose from.

Any decision will likely come down to how much money Trump and the Pentagon want to throw at it — and what Congress allows.

Miller says there’s a bipartisan appetite in Washington for upgrades to US missile defense.

He points to a 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report that saw even dovish liberals sign on to more spending.

‘The thinking is changing,’ Miller told the Daily Mail.

‘There may be a way of doing this that doesn’t bust the defense budget of the US or its allies.’

Sokolski supports what he calls a much-needed ‘game-changer’ for US security.

‘We might be able to develop a system that would make a massive strike of a few hundred warheads look so unappetizing that Russia and China wouldn’t pull the trigger,’ he said.

Against those odds, Moscow and Beijing might be more open to arms control talks.

Gibbons, the author of The Hegemon’s Tool Kit, says the opposite is true — a fortress-like America would grow belligerent, and its adversaries would devise military workarounds.

Russia and China designed hypersonic missiles to evade America’s existing defenses, she said.

They may already be devising a nuclear-tipped underwater drone capable of leveling Seattle, New York or another coastal city, unaffected by aerial defenses, she added.

‘We’d be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on something we don’t know will work, and actually motivate our adversaries to innovate and find a new way to overtake our defenses,’ said Gibbons.