John Oliver is doing his best to break my heart. Forget Jaws, Psycho, or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre — Testament is my choice for the scariest movie ever. And I did watch The Day After when it first appeared, but I don’t remember the after-show:
… On its original broadcast (Sunday, November 20, 1983), ABC and local TV affiliates opened 1-800 hotlines with counselors standing by. There were no commercial breaks after the nuclear attack. ABC then aired a live debate, hosted by Nightline’s Ted Koppel, featuring the scientist Carl Sagan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Brent Scowcroft and conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr.. Sagan argued against nuclear proliferation, while Buckley promoted the concept of nuclear deterrence. Sagan described the arms race in the following terms: “Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who’s ahead, who’s stronger.”…
I suppose an optimist would point out that, hey, it’s been thirty years and we’re all still here! (… including Henry Kissinger!)
Ben
Threads makes The Day After look like the Care Bears by comparison. One mini-series I don’t ever wish to revisit…
Tim C.
I was seven years old and I got nightmares from the trailers alone, didn’t watch the full thing till I was 18 though, still a effing scary thing.
JasonF
But not Sagan, alas.
Geeno
The Day After was the first popular conceptualization of what came next. Before that, everything was about who was ahead, who was winning, and even though there was an ever-growing contingent of “no one wins” people, the idea hadn’t penetrated popular consciousness to any real extant until that movie. It was the first to show characters dying of radiation sickness. The lingering death that’s way more scary than instant incineration.
JDM
@JasonF:
The sane one, naturally.
Ben
@JasonF:
On the bright side, Buckley and McNamara are gone too!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
The last time I mentioned this, I got flamed, but what the hell. My memories of that time did not involve either me or my contemporaries being overly worried about nukes (I was 19 when The Day After came out). On our campus, apartheid and divestment was a much bigger thing. I, for one, thought that everyone had read The Guns of August and had experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even with the revival of Cold War rhetoric by the GOP, I still thought detente was the order of the day. I don’t recall anyone +/-2 years of my age getting worked up about it.
NotMax
On the Beach (1959) and Fail-Safe (1964) set the stage, as in its own way did Dr. Strangelove and even The World, the Flesh and the Devil. BBC’s The War Game won a foreign film Oscar in 1967.
And the movie version of Barefoot Gen was also first shown in 1983.
Geoduck
Ditto the Threads comment. It was made in the UK, didn’t suffer as much as The Day After did in terms of network censors (director Nicholas Meyer vowed to never do TV work again), and didn’t have to pull as many punches. If you watch it, you’ll need a strong stomach.
Suffern ACE
On the plus side, we didn’t all die in the 80s. On the minus side, this led us to believe our world elite wasn’t insane. At the same time, it led to a heavy investment in technology that now manifests itself in toasters that can print selfies. It’s been a mixed blessing.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Suffern ACE: Dear god.
KG
@Suffern ACE: are we sure we didn’t all die in the 80s?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@KG: I remember parts of 1991 very clearly.
ETA: Especially the skiing in the Austrian Alps. It might be Purgatory because the snow wasn’t that great. OTOH, the beer was the good and the girls were young and pretty – and a day skiing on ice beats a day at work.
Joel Hanes
I read Wylie’s Triumph before I was a teenager. (Rooskies are really evil, deliberately cook the entire N. Hemisphere in fifty years of killing radiation; in all of North America, fifteen people survive in a single shelter. Rooskies die too.)
Badly written, badly dated, and boy is it depressing.
The fact that we really could blow up ourselves and everything else pretty completely, and yet haven’t, yet, is a little astounding, given how stupid we’re being about several other things.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I must be a year or two younger than you and my memory of the time is very much the same. It was all “Free Mandela” back then along with a lot of prescient anger at the War on Drugs. Ronald Reagan was the great Satan where I grew up so there were a lot of things in the here and now to be terrified of.
Suffern ACE
I think it was a fair rebuttal to the WorldvWar III Miniseries that was all about those Russians trying to hold us hostage, but which ended with the bombs flying. Some people died. After the final credits. But we didn’t have to worry about it. The Alaska National Guard did its best, but they couldn’t stop the war.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@beltane: Thanks. Like I said, the last time I said something like this, I got murdered in the comments. It was people five or more years older or younger who were the leads in that argument. My theory, however, was that there was a small window of folks who didn’t grow up with that a nightmare scenario because it seemed too farfetched. Nena was enough older that she didn’t count, and besides good version of the song was in German. And as for The Smiths, Morrissey’s tongue was so far in cheek that it came out a vulgar orifice.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I hope you watched Oliver’s clip anyways. Did you know they’re still using floppy discs in the missle silos?
Gemina13
I saw it with my mother. She had to calm me down from hysterics when the bombs were dropped. The next morning, she and my older brother talked about the movie, and she said her one wish – should nuclear war occur – would be that all of us would be as close to Ground Zero as possible, so we could die together and not linger in agony.
Hell of a thing to hear when you’re just 13. But I bet a lot of us Gen Xers heard similar sentiments.
I don’t wonder why so many of us from that generation just stayed in the background, kept our heads down, and made the most out of what each day brought, from the Reagan Administration on. From where I’m sitting, every single day that we are all still alive is a gift. As a child, I never thought I’d see my 16th birthday. As a teen, I was coming to grips with the possibility that I might actually become an adult. When the Berlin Wall came down, I cried for joy, not only for all the East Germans no longer barricaded behind the monstrosity, but for myself and my friends. The Wall was a visible symbol of the Cold War, and when it came down, it felt like the specter of nuclear war went with it. (I hope I’m not the only one who remembers the cheesy Pepsi “Peace on Earth” commercials that aired that year – or, rather, the only one who remembers them and still tears up.)
But “The Day After” isn’t as scary as the BBC’s answer to it, “Threads.” You can find it on YouTube. My freshman science teacher had us watch it and “Testament” as an assignment. “Testament” shattered me, and if I can find it I’ll buy it; Jane Alexander gave an incredible performance in a movie about the bomb that has 1/100th of the gruesomeness of “The Day After” while still gutting the audience. But “Threads” gave me nightmares. I still have dreams of children and teenagers with cataracts stumbling through a barren wasteland, covered in radioactive dust.
NotMax
Turns out The War Game is on YouTube.
Fair warning: from about 15 minutes on, not for the squeamish. And as it was made in 1965, no CGI.
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I was about the same age, but since it was closer to home (yes, I grew up in KC, though I didn’t go to college there), we had a watching party in our floor lounge.
People were shocked that I both knew what the effect of an airburst would be, where it would be sited (first blast 300-1000 feet above the railyard next to Municipal Airport, second blast at about 1500 feet above the split of Southwest Trafficway and I-35), and that it would basically destroy the metro area. And that watching my hometown nuked didn’t make me cry. Of course, I was already of the opinion that nuking the people I went to high school with would be a service to humanity.
My brother and I used to discuss megadeaths resulting from a nuclear exchange at the dinner table. Eventually my mom got sick of us and made us quit.
Apartheid and divestment was a bigger thing on our campus too, but nuclear proliferation was still a thing, and protests still drew a (small) crowd.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Anne Laurie: I never thought the Air Force should be trusted with a damned thing. The only thing the USAF ever cared about fighters. Honestly, I am more scared about this since my military service. FWIW, I served in a nuclear capable artillery unit. We, who had access only to tactical nukes, were insanely paranoid about making sure that no mistakes were made.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@FlyingToaster: Yeah, protests existed, but the terror that Gemina13 describes was not a part of my contemporaries’ experience.
? Martin
Well, FWIW, we’re accusing Russia of breaking one of our nuclear weapons treaties by testing nuclear cruise missiles.
jheartney
I remember The Day After fairly well, as I’d just got my first color TV to watch it on. I also remember the discussion afterwards. Buckley considered the whole production traitorous left-wing propaganda, as it might dissuade us from spending ever more on arms. Sagan talked about the then-new nuclear winter scenario, so new it hadn’t been included in the show’s screenplay. Ted Koppel was relatively reasonable; what a long slide down it’s been to the likes of David Gregory today.
The network that ran it was so petrified of the wingnut reaction that they funded a risible bit of right-wing scare porn called “Amerika” in an attempt to appease them. (Think Red Dawn, only longer and less interesting. The storyline involved a U.S. already under Soviet occupation, with Mariel Hemmingway as a red-blooded American girl forced to be mistress to fat Soviet generals. The implication was we were defeated thanks to all the commie libs weakening our patriotic resolve. Hilariously stupid.)
YellowJournalism
@Gemina13: My elementary school was built with a fall-out shelter, so one day when I was around nine or ten, I asked my mom if we would go there if bombs dropped. She explained a little bit about radiation sickness, then told me if the bombs dropped, she’d turn on the gas and let us all “fall asleep” peacefully. Freaked me the fuck out.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@YellowJournalism: The army’s advice if a nuke dropped in one’s vicinity was to make sure one was wearing one’s helmet, turn to face the explosion, bend forward, and kiss one’s ass good-bye.
cckids
Whitley Strieber’s WarDay book was, to me, similarly chilling – its a look at the United States 5 years after a “limited nuclear exchange”. Scary as hell.
Geoduck
@cckids:
Pity that Strieber went crazy and starting writing about alien abductions, instead of doing an “international” sequel to Warday, which was what was originally planned, evidently.
And just for the record, it was co-written by James Kunetka.
Jewish Steel
You ever remember old commenters out of the blue as you’re going about your day? Whateverhappenedto arguingwithsignposts?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Jewish Steel: Changed ‘nym, and then went away.
TG Chicago
I don’t see a conflict between these views. I think nuclear deterrence has been shown to be effective, yet I don’t really want to see more nukes in the world (though I think it’s preferable to let, say, Iran get nukes than it is to start a war with Iran to prevent it).
The data here would be more convincing if the timeline stretched back farther, but you can see that deaths from war have been declining:
http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/battle-deaths-evolution-by-types-of-war.jpg
When you think of something like the Crimean crisis, it’s easy to imagine that becoming a very serious international conflict if not for the nuclear deterrent. As scary as nukes are, I think the world is a better place for them.
Hobbes
If you liked The Secret of NIMH you may want to watch Z for Zachariah, which was written by the same author and is set after a nuclear war. It’s due out sometime in 2015.
cckids
@Geoduck: That’s right! I knew at one point there was a co-author, but spaced on it. I thought they did a good job imagining what the US might look like.
6StringFanatic
I was a 16 year old Army brat living in Frankfurt, Germany when The Day After was televised. We heard all about it but it obviously was never shown on Armed Forces TV, the only American network we had (I also missed 5 years worth of TV commercials, including some classics like “I Want My MTV” and “Where’s the beef?”). I saw it several months later in a German movie theater (in English; might have had German subtitles but I don’t remember). Wasn’t overly impressed or scared. Our military parents were much more concerned about the possibility of a Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap and I was personally much more afraid of the wave of Red Army Faction car bombings around Frankfurt at the time. Now THAT was scary.
Mike G
Supposedly, seeing The Day After convinced Reagan to get serious about talking to the Russians. Years of fact-filled reports about missiles and death rates apparently didn’t register much but seeing a fictional nuclear attack depicted on TV did.
His dimwitted penchant for confusing reality with movie plots worked some good for once.
SixStringFanatic
I was a 16 year old Army brat living in Frankfurt, Germany at the time. Armed Forces TV obviously didn’t show that movie and that was the only American network we had (we got all the popular TV shows months after they ran in the States. And no commercials. I missed 5 years worth of TV commercials, including the classics like “I Want My MTV” and “Where’s the beef?!?”) but we heard all about the commotion the movie stirred up, both in The Stars and Stripes, the American newspaper, and on the 12-hour delayed American network news broadcasts that we got via satellite. I saw it with some friends months later in a German movie theater (in English; might have had German subtitles but I don’t remember). The movie was interesting but not at all scary to me. Our military parents were much more concerned with the possibility of a Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap and I was personally much more afraid of the wave of Red Army Faction car bombings going on in Frankfurt at the time. Now THAT was scary. In fact, on my 18th birthday, I was about a hundred or so yards away from one of those car bombs when it went off at our American shopping complex. I was inside of one building and the bomb was on the other side of another row of buildings and, as I said, about a hundred yards or more away, so I was in little physical danger but HOLY CRAP, what an experience!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@SixStringFanatic: Did you really think that the Soviets were going to come through the border at the Fulda Gap and/or at Hof?
ETA: You changed your comment. You might want to do people the courtesy of noting that.
Robert Sneddon
@TG Chicago: Nuclear weapons owned and operated by someone else (in this case the Soviets) brought the real threat of death and destruction to the US mainland, a place that had been sacrosanct from enemy threats since, well, 1812. What the Allies did to the Germans and the Japanese in the mid-40s with artillery, bombers and conventional explosives could now happen to American cities at a moment’s notice with little or no defence possible. I think that was the scary thing for most Americans.
SixStringFanatic
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): That was what the Army trained for, relentlessly, and that was a big part of their strategic planning, that Soviet troops and armaments would, if there was an invasion, come through the Fulda Gap. Now, the large grain of salt you should take that with is that I was not enlisted, merely a teenager with an Army dad, so I wasn’t privy to actual military briefings, but that was, as far as we knew, the biggest point to have thousands of American troops, tanks and artillery in Germany.
Were our military parents actually worried about such a thing? Not really as few people actually thought any sort of thing was really going to happen. But that’s what they were supposedly there for and that’s what they trained for.
I made no changes to that comment once it was posted but I cannot speak to the vagaries of FYWP. Thanks for the tip, though, and the courtesy with which you offered it!
Fred
In high school I read “Alas Babylon”. It’s story line goes: Trouble in Mid East starts WW III, Guy living in rural Florida sees nukes in distance, Locals survive by luck and pluck, Guy gets pretty girl so his son now has mommy, Greedy fools buy contaminated gold and die from radiation poisoning, Guy runs out of cigarettes so that proves nukes are good for your health, Helicopter comes with good news that USA won the war and the secretary of agriculture is now POTUS.
Who says nuke war can’t be cool and good for self reliant bootstrappers, boy youbetcha? Should keep that book on the shelf next to your copy of “Atlas Shrugged”.
Now for the real story of our prospects of survival:
If you can get a copy of Sagan’s “Cosmos” read the chapter “Who Speaks for Earth?”. Read the whole darn book. I never saw the TV series but the book is brilliant. Some of the facts are out of date but the overall story of the development of science and civilization is beautifully told. Sagan convincingly argues that science is the only chance mankind has of saving ourselves from destroying ourselves and we all better get on board and pretty quick. Carl Sagan spoke for Earth and he was taken from us too soon.
SixStringFanatic
Sorry for the kinda-sorta double post. Did the first post on my phone and it seemed to have crapped the bed so I pulled out the laptop and redid the post, with a couple extra details.
The moral of the story? As always, FYWP.
AlladinsLamp
I still have one of those paper book covers, given to me in elementary school (1966) that you would fold up and around your textbooks, for protection.
Its kind of pale yellow and brown in color and has drawings of Civil Defense logos, shelters, and storage drums.
Robert Sneddon
@SixStringFanatic: The weird thing was that the Soviets had lots of armour and troops prepositioned in Eastern Europe to stop the inevitable NATO invasion; after all why would the Western capitalists spend all that money and effort maintaining such a large mobile force in Western Europe if they didn’t intend to attack Russia to destroy the heartland of communism? They had tried and nearly succeeded in the early 40s, after all and stopping that invasion had cost the Rodina tens of millions of lives.
SixStringFanatic
@Robert Sneddon: Isn’t that just typical, though? Both sides thought the other were relentless jackals who would come pouring over the border some day when, in reality, neither side had any real intention of doing so. I would decry the monumental waste of it all but how else was my teenage self going to get the opportunity to live in Europe for five years with all the unmatched experiences that came with it? I do not come from moneyed folk.
Nicole
@Fred: This thread immediately made me think of “Alas, Babylon” except I couldn’t think of the title. Thanks; it was making me nuts that I couldn’t remember it. I had a different reaction to it than you did (I read it when pretty young, maybe 9), I found it profoundly depressing (Of course, come to think of it, I had the same reaction to Atlas Shrugged).
I would have been ten or eleven when The Day After came out. I still remember the horse getting incinerated, and the girl losing her hair from radiation sickness laughing and crying about medical personnel trying to put a ribbon in what was left. Odd the stuff that stays with you.
SixStringFanatic
Sorry if I sound a little blase or jaded about it but looking back, it does seem to be just one giant farce. Which I guess maybe it always is until somebody fucks up and the bullets start flying.
It wasn’t at all a farce to all the folks represented by little wooden crosses along the Berlin Wall where they died trying to get over. Another experience I’ll never forget and which cannot now, thank FSM, be repeated.
Like Gemina13 wrote some hours ago, I cried real tears of real joy the day I turned on my TV and saw people standing and dancing on top of that monstrosity.
Robert Sneddon
@SixStringFanatic: Ideologues on both sides didn’t help. Having folks like Tailgunner Joe McCarthy raving about how Godless Communism was an existential threat to The American Way of Life especially didn’t help. A real existential threat, in the Soviet government’s eyes was the Wehrmacht driving for Moscow burning everything in their path. Whether it was under a swastika banner or NATO’s didn’t affect their attitude towards being ready for the invasion when (not if) it happened.
James E. Powell
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
There was a whole wing of the Reagan Administration who were arguing that a nuclear exchange could be survivable. This included then vice-president George H W Bush. There was a widely discussed if not widely read article “Victory is Possible” and the authors were on the team. Reagan really was using a lot of heated rhetoric in the first half of his administration. We must recall that he didn’t run against Carter’s policy, he ran against the whole idea of nuclear arms limits, from JFK to RMN/Kissinger. SALT II got shot down because it wasn’t manly and bellicose enough.
And they were reinvigorating in and expanding the civil defense networks from the 50s. I remember thinking it was just a way to give money to state/local money to Republicans. Cf. Anti-terrorist money for rural sheriff’s departments under George W Bush.
That a nuclear exchange could be in some respects survivable was of course ridiculous, but the guys pushing it had the same fervor as the guys who produced the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, and were fully expecting to go to Syria next. They were obviously true believers and they scared people
The anti-nuclear movement was big in England. It’s been a long time since I thought about Dr Helen Caldicott. I had to check wikipedia to see that she is still alive.
Bobby Thomson
@Fred: Alas Babylon was absolutely ridiculous.
No love for Special Bulletin?
Jewish Steel
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Hmm. Yes, I seem to recall that now.
SixStringFanatic
@James E. Powell: The anti-nuke movement was big in Germany too. We Americans were warned that it might not be a great idea to go downtown on the days they were having big demonstrations. A friend of mine and I did once though because, being teenagers, we forgot what day it was. We turned a corner and saw this massive crowd with signs and banners and an impressive variety of noisemakers. Went right back around the corner and caught the U-bahn (subway) home.
They had reason to be upset, seeing as how the tactical nukes were on their soil.
Louise
Thank you for mentioning Testament. It shattered me. The more people who see it the better.
I can’t believe we’re back to this (though I guess the case might be made that we never left it) 30 years later.
Gvg
I never heard much about the day after. different generation I guess, but don’t forget what is new to you may be old to your elders. For me it was Alas Babalon, On the Beach, a lot of science fiction that took for granted we all knew certain things and my Father. alas Babalon may have seemed hokey to some but I grew up in it’s setting and my dad went to school with the author’s daughter. I had it explained to me before I read it. How people built home shelters and sometimes committed suicide in despair. I had almost forgotten one of the reasons I hated Reagan was the way he talked about nuclear war and Bush 1 was even scarier. turned out he wasn’t as stupid as he talked but the electorate shouldn’t have been dumb enough to take those chances.
K488
@Bobby Thomson: Thanks for mentioning Special Bulletin! I remember it vividly, and hardly ever meet someone who saw it.
Geoduck
@Fred:
Alas, Babylon definitely has its problems, (a rather flippant Boy’s Life tone being one) but in its defense you are mis-remembering a few details there.
WaterGirl
I have no idea what you guys are talking about; I apparently missed the whole thing.
I was a bit perplexed about that so I went back and checked the date. That was less than 3 weeks after my mom died, and I’m sure I was in my own little world of grief.
jimbo57
I remember how The Day After and Testament made conservatives so mad they had to rebut them with their own mini-series, Amerika and their own movie, Red Dawn. where a “defenseless” U.S. is invaded and occupied by godless Rooskies and their swarthy Hispanic allies.
ellie
I had to work that evening and then I went out with friends. I never did see that movie.
FlipYrWhig
@jimbo57: My friend circle did a Spanish-language video project in high school that was a takeoff on “Amerika” and the Saturday Night Live spoof “Amerida” (about Canada taking over the US): “Amexica.” We could probably make millions with that screenplay today.
Gemina13
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): It could have to do with location. The West Coast tended to be more concerned with nukes than either the War on Drugs or Reagan’s shenanigans. Also, many of my friends were raised by parents who were either druggies or drunks; if not for being afraid of getting the shit kicked out of them by the rest of their families, my friends would’ve gladly narced on their DNA donors if it would’ve meant a drop in abuse. My contemporaries didn’t start giving a shit about the new Prohibition until they got away from home and saw not all drug users were sadistic assholes out to breed their own victims.
Gemina13
@Nicole:
For me, it’s the preacher attempting to minister to his sick and dying congregation, growing hysterical as the one family has to remove their daughter when she starts hemorrhaging.
jimbo57
@FlipYrWhig: Sad to say, you could probably flog it to the Republicans as a documentary.
Matt McIrvin
@Fred: We read “Alas, Babylon” too. My interpretation of the ending was that it was supposed to be ironic: This military guy says we won, we really walloped ’em, and what does it matter? Of course nobody really won. I think there’s some line in that passage about “the thousand-year night” that lies ahead.
I remember my teacher stressing that the main thing that had changed since the novel was written was “the caliber of the weapons.”
Matt McIrvin
…I think the experience of the late Cold War was very different depending on not just where you lived, but the media you consumed and the political attitudes you were raised with at the time. Growing up in Northern Virginia, I lost a lot of sleep over the possibility of nuclear war; reading Carl Sagan and Douglas Hofstadter and being the kid of Mondale/Ferraro voters, I was terrified of it basically all the time in the early to mid-1980s. But I knew a lot of people who didn’t worry about it at all and weren’t aware that anyone did, or were vaguely aware that such people existed but thought they were just being stupid.
Matt McIrvin
…And, yes, I still worry that just because the Cold War is supposedly over and the Soviet Union no longer exists, we’re foolishly discounting the continuing possibility of a big thermonuclear war, probably with Russia. We drew down the arsenal by a considerable fraction, but too many of the nukes are still there. Whenever the US/Russia situation gets too shouty I freak out about this a little. Child of the Eighties, I guess.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Gemina13: Nope.
I’m one year older than you. I saw the movie. I thought it was stupid beyond belief. But I’ve always been of the opinion, ever since I was a child, that the wiping out of humanity wouldn’t be a great loss.
For those of you who like their post-apocalyptic horror, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road wins hands-down as the best and scariest tale of post-nuclear Earth ever written.
Mnemosyne
I mentioned this in the last go-around, but I picked up a really interesting book by British film critic Kim Newman called Apocalypse Movies that discusses most of the movies people have brought up here (including “Special Bulletin,” IIRC) and puts them into context for the time. He spends a lot of time on “The War Game” (I’m not going to be executed by a fucking meter maid!)
One that no one has brought up yet is the animated When the Wind Blows, which has an elderly couple trying to survive in their quaint English village after a nuclear exchange. It’s about as depressing as you’d expect.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
According to IMBb, it won for Best Documentary, even though it was a fiction film. The Academy changed the rules after it won.
Robert Sneddon
@Matt McIrvin: Virtually all of the nuclear weapons in Russia and America’s arsenal today are significantly smaller than the multi-megatonne devices maintained ready-to-use in the 60s and 70s. The Soviets had deployable weapons rated about 14 Mtonnes, the largest US weapons were about 10 Mtonnes. Today nearly all nukes are a maximum of about 500ktonnes yield, in part because the delivery systems are more accurate but mostly to reduce the physical size of the device so that it can fit in the nosecone of a missile.
Helmut Monotreme
@Robert Sneddon:
I too was an army brat in the cold war ’80s I lived in Norway though, so at arms length from whatever was going on in Germany. The point all of that military hardware on the border was that an invasion of sorts was part of the plan. It goes a little something like this: The generals of NATO explained to the governments of western Europe, that it would be impossible to stop a modern army at any given aritrary line like for example the border between east and west germany, there are too many ways a modern mechanized force can move, to be able stop a force of any size anywhere on the border. So the strategy was called ‘defense in depth’ which meant allowing an invasion to evolve and then identifying the invasion routes and deploying the forces to oppose it. Sadly, this plan means that the communist tanks could roll anywhere from 20-50 miles across the border before they could be stopped. This was very upsetting to the governments of western europe But then someone got the brilliant idea that those tanks didn’t have to cross the border for defense in depth to start, the plan was when the communist invasion started, all of the NATO tanks would roll across the border into east germany and they would start the ‘defense in depth’ plan on communist soil rather than shooting up West Germany.
Uncle Cosmo
@YellowJournalism: Funny thing, folks always talk about “turning on the gas” as a painless method of suicide, but that no longer works:
And for that matter, who would prefer burning to death in a gas explosion?
Uncle Cosmo
Growing up in the 50s & 60s I think we all suffered from major cognitive dissonance re nuclear war. I remember it occasionally occurring to me as a teenager that all that had to happen was for some guy over in the CCCP to press a button & I & everyone & everything I cared about would be radioactive ash in a half-hour–if we were lucky. And then the thought passed. How was anyone with no power to change anything about the situation supposed to wrap his mind around it without going stark raving mad?
Oh, and FTR, John Oliver’s joke re the gastroenterologists is over 50 years old. From Herbert Gold’s “The Day They Got Boston” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1961 (paraphrased from memory):
Matt McIrvin
@Robert Sneddon: True, and I guess “boosted fission” is the right word instead of “thermonuclear” for the ones that are mostly still out there.
But I can only imagine that an exchange of several hundred multi-hundred-kT warheads would still pretty much break civilization in the countries involved. There are military targets close enough to most major metropolitan areas that they’re going to be badly damaged even if nobody’s going for “strategic” targeting of civilians, which I doubt anyway.
Mnemosyne
@Uncle Cosmo:
Same with cars — modern car emissions of carbon monoxide are so low that, if you locked yourself in the garage with the engine running today, you would die of starvation before you suffocated.
Matt McIrvin
@Uncle Cosmo: And the awful smell is actually an intentional additive, as a safety feature; natural gas is odorless by itself.