By dusk, the panic had thinned into a raw, humming silence, the kind that follows a near‑miss on a dark highway. Satellite feeds were re‑examined frame by frame; analysts argued over faint heat signatures that might be proof—or pixelated ghosts. No one wanted the blame for overreacting, but no one wanted to be the one who shrugged it off, either. The delay between each official statement felt like an eternity measured in refresh buttons and breaking-news banners.

When the carefully worded denials finally arrived, they convinced almost no one. The world exhaled, but not in relief—more in exhausted disbelief at how real it had felt. In Tehran and Kansas alike, people understood that nothing physical had exploded, yet something vital had. Trust, once fractured on a global scale, doesn’t shatter with noise; it crumbles in notifications. And long after the post was buried, millions kept checking their screens, half expecting the next rumor to be the one that wasn’t.