Feckless boasts of military might and icy vows to annihilate one another might not necessarily prove war between the U.S., North Korea, and their allies is nigh, but the monumental increase in stocks of weapons and defense manufacturers — the economic fingerprints a preparation for a colossal military endeavor — just might.

"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States," President Trump railed yesterday. "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

If, as legendary author John Steinbeck posited, "all war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal," than the altogether avoidable rush for violent, physical confrontation with North Korea — currently unfolding by the hour — could easily be deemed foolishness of the highest order.

After all, when nations resort to verbal sparring over the size and force of one another's … militaries, it's difficult not to picture world leaders as children hurling insults in a sandbox — a disturbing mental image only worsened by the fact Trump and perhaps Kim hold keys to arsenals with nuclear capabilities never before seen on Earth.

Horrifying recollections of bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in World War II precisely 72 years ago — the latter, to the day — paint a cold if prescient portent of the need for defense.

Keen to shore up defenses amid the latest iterations of political tumult between the cloistered totalitarian regime and the supposed Land of the Free, a number of Lockheed Martin's customer nations are snatching up missile defense systems in preparation for what some analysts contend may be the next world war.