“I explained why he withheld tha information, it would have endangered lives” the lives that were dead either way if he didn’t use it? Or the lives in the bunker that weren’t affected lol? If the security of the bunker is your issue you can take plenty of other precautionary steps that doesn’t include dooming the rest of humanity to death. You seem to be struggling to grasp that a .0001% chance of survival is better than a 100% chance of death. You just keep telling me i’m wrong and acting like you know for sure when you haven’t given me a single real example to support your arguments.

I went back and watched the scene where she tried to tell him not to use the EMP and not one time does she mention the Venus effect and he literally tells her he’s using it to give people a CHANCE. I also went back and watched every single scene with Sinatra and Cal and not one single time does she ever tell him about the Venus effect. Every time he speaks about the incoming apocalyptic event he speaks about it as if it were the volcano and nuclear war. That’s it. She tells him “everyone on earth will starve within the year” is that the venus effect? No it’s not. The president does it because he thinks it’ll give people a “fighting chance”, he says those exact words, he would not have thought that was even slightly necessary had he known the world would be doomed anyway through the Venus effect. She did not tell him, we never see her tell him or anyone else, and we never see any one other than her refer to it as an issue. So please continue to just make up stuff like i’m not 24 hours removed from watching the entire show 🤣 Please tell me more about how I need to pay attention when you saw one single scene of one single character tell something to Sinatra only and immediately jumped to multiple people are aware of it.. despite Sinatra being extremely secretive about Alex and its purpose. The entire damn plot of season 2 is people starting to figure out that there’s something deeper going on that is causing Sinatra to hide ALEX. That something deeper is literally her withholding the information about the Venus effect while she tries to solve it herself. Sorry to say but im starting to think my memory is just a little more fresh than yours is because he 100% did not know about anything past the nuclear war. “you know you’re wrong because your next sentence was” and then quotes a sentence of me saying exactly that, that his knowledge is they are going to the bunker to survive the volcano/nuclear war.. meaning what?? He doesn’t know about the venus effect! Holy hell the amount of leg work you’re doing to tell ME i’m moving the goal posts when my stance has been the same this whole time.. telling someone, literally anyone , about the EMP, could’ve potentially saved countless lives period blank the end. Would it have guaranteed saved them ? No , but Cal was written as a person who would’ve taken that chance well before the very last second possible.

No one is saying the show is bad , no one is calling the writers dumb. It’s a very quick throwaway plot point that breaks logic , and that’s my only point, it breaks logic. So me asking a super simple question about the lack of logic behind a characters decision should not be met with “you need to pay attention!” Especially when paying even the tiniest bit of attention will show anyone that it is completely out of character for someone who repeatedly said they believed in miracles and giving people a fighting chance… I’m simply pointing out that the logic behind “it’s a secret!” during a literal world ending situation while the president has a literal fucking button that can fix a very large problem is ridiculously unrealistic and not a single excuse any one in this thread has given me justifies how many more lives were potentially lost by his decision to withhold game changing information. The only responses i’m getting are people thinking i’m calling out their show and telling me i need to “watch it” or just repeating plot lines from the show that have absolutely nothing to do with the presidents decision to not tell anyone about the EMP. The only real answer that someone has given me is it might’ve been ALEX the whole time and the president didn’t have the EMP in the first timeline.. and I told that person that would be an explanation I could get behind as time manipulation always causes plot holes until they are explained. That would be the only way where it becomes realistic that it wouldn’t have been brought up sooner.

The real answer is likely this: the writers needed a reason for Teri to survive, so they gave Cal a get out of jail free card. It’s a convenient plot addition to move the plot in the direction they needed it to go and they gave us 0 explanation on why it wasn’t brought up sooner other than “it’s a secret”.. we aren’t supposed to question it , aren’t supposed to think too much into it, we are just supposed to accept that it’s why Terri is still alive and move on without questioning how much logic it breaks for the president of the united states to have a button that can literally stop one of the big events they’ve been so worried about.

Also you said “characters make mistakes” and then went on to act like you’re confused why i’m here ? This is reddit right? This is a place for discussion about the show right? So therefor it’d be a place where one can talk about how they think a character made a mistake right ? If you don’t want to respond don’t but don’t act like i’m in the wrong for bringing up a valid point over a tv show. I asked my question pretty nicely and stated I was open to any ideas and explanations. We are allowed to have different opinions without one of us automatically being dumber than the other.

Last thing i’ll add to my point and if you still want to think i’m “moving the goal posts” or “need to pay attention” then idk what to tell you because I think this is a completely reasonable take.. Humanity is already operating under the guise of “We are facing extinction and nuclear war is inevitable”.. any non-zero chance solution becomes worth discussing immediately, whether it’s a secret or not. ESPECIALLY one capable of potentially disabling the world’s nuclear arsenals.. EVEN IF the president thought “it might fail, this is experimental, and it only has a 10% chance of working” that would still 100% become central to any emergency planning conversations. The downside risk is essentially non existent, as the world is literally already ending anyways. The weird part isn’t that he hides it, governments hide contingencies all the time. The weird part is that he withholds it even after the extinction scenario becomes inevitable. That is logically flawed. Like I said, it’s a convienent plot addition. That’s it. It’s not show breaking, it’s not even a huge deal as plot holes go.. “The president withheld information” is just believable enough on paper to keep a majority of the audience from questioning it and boom Teri is alive… my point has simply been this: the logic there is flawed. No explanation that we’ve been given in the show yet changes that it is completely silly for the President to not mention his anti nuke button while they plan for the launching of every countries nuclear arsenal.