When did we learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
Found this post on reddit while cleaning out items in google reader. The picture is of a door to the launch control room for an ICBM (which I found kind of funny).
Some of the comments in the thread are very interesting. It's interesting what you can find out about our nuclear launch protocols on a site like reddit. Who knows, maybe the 1983 movie Wargames was more true to life than I imagined. Check out this opening clip from the movie with Michael Madsen and John Spencer.
I also found some links to a 1979 PBS documentary called "First Strike" which are pretty interesting.
According to the wikipedia article for First Strike, some of the footage made it into the popular made for TV movie, The Day After (which coincidentally came out the same year as Wargames).
During the Cold War, the fear of a full-scale nuclear war was palpable. Movies and TV shows like the above examples were common. The entire world feared that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) would play itself out between the United States and the Soviet Union, sparked by a computer glitch, human error, or a deliberate first strike.
In the ten years since the end of the Cold War, the fear of nuclear war has receded to the back of our collective consciousness, which seems weird to me. When did we stop worrying about the bomb? With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of India, Pakistan, North Korea (and possibly Iran) as nuclear states, I'd think that the fear of nuclear war would be greater than ever. Looking back, perhaps we were safer adhering to the M.A.D. doctrine when we only had to worry about the USSR. Maybe now's the time to worry?
Some of the comments in the thread are very interesting. It's interesting what you can find out about our nuclear launch protocols on a site like reddit. Who knows, maybe the 1983 movie Wargames was more true to life than I imagined. Check out this opening clip from the movie with Michael Madsen and John Spencer.
I also found some links to a 1979 PBS documentary called "First Strike" which are pretty interesting.
According to the wikipedia article for First Strike, some of the footage made it into the popular made for TV movie, The Day After (which coincidentally came out the same year as Wargames).
During the Cold War, the fear of a full-scale nuclear war was palpable. Movies and TV shows like the above examples were common. The entire world feared that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) would play itself out between the United States and the Soviet Union, sparked by a computer glitch, human error, or a deliberate first strike.
In the ten years since the end of the Cold War, the fear of nuclear war has receded to the back of our collective consciousness, which seems weird to me. When did we stop worrying about the bomb? With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of India, Pakistan, North Korea (and possibly Iran) as nuclear states, I'd think that the fear of nuclear war would be greater than ever. Looking back, perhaps we were safer adhering to the M.A.D. doctrine when we only had to worry about the USSR. Maybe now's the time to worry?
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