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Born in the late 60s, so teenager in the 80s in the UK. I recall that exact same fear of every passing aeroplane. In our case the cultural equivalents of OTB an
by sjcsjc 9y ago
Born in the late 60s, so teenager in the 80s in the UK. I recall that exact same fear of every passing aeroplane. In our case the cultural equivalents of OTB and DS were Threads and The Day After, and the Protect and Survive announcements that Frankie Goes To Hollywood sampled in Two Tribes.
I find it interesting that the terror of the global thermonuclear war seems to have disappeared from the popular psyche, even though exactly the same weapons are still there ready.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoWhat does OTB and DS mean in this context?
- hota_mazi 9y agoIt's not that strange since all countries are well aware that any country that would start a third world war would get annihilated within minutes by the rest of the world. If World War 3 didn't start during the Cuba Missile Crisis, it's extremely unlikely it would start now, not just because of the increased nuclear arsenals that all participants have accumulated since then but also for very trivial economic reasons.
- mikeash 9y agoThe risk is still there. You can talk about economic reasons or MAD all you want, but then some idiot loads a training tape into the live system, or scientists launch a sounding rocket and somebody forgets to tell the early warning people, or a head of state starts going crazy, and suddenly you're one bad decision away from catastrophe. Some things are much improved since the Cuban Missile Crisis. For example, the US Air Force is no longer eager to wage preemptive nuclear war on our enemies. Some things are much worse, though, such as the transition from bombers to ICBMs, resulting in a need to launch quickly to respond to an attack and an inability to recall a strike, or the change from a bipolar to a multipolar world with multiple conflicting nuclear weapons states. I think of it in terms of probability per year. The fact that we haven't had a nuclear war yet suggests that this probability isn't super high. 10% would be implausible given history. But 1% is pretty plausible. So is 0.0001%. There's a massive difference between those two probabilities, though! 0.0001% means it probably doesn't matter, and human civilization is very likely to either collapse from some other problem or advance to a point where MAD can't happen long before a nuclear war breaks out. 1% makes it perhaps the most dire threat we face. I personally think it's closer to 1% than 0.0001%. The systems are error-prone and too many of the people involved are stupid or potentially insane.
- Houshalter 9y ago>I think of it in terms of probability per year. The fact that we haven't had a nuclear war yet suggests that this probability isn't super high. This is super misleading reasoning because of anthropic bias. There are many possible Earths. On all the ones were nuclear war happened, we wouldn't be here to observe it. You can only ever observe the "surprising" result that you continue to exist. So you can't use it as evidence in a probability estimate. We came so close to nuclear war on multiple occasions. The chance can't be that low.
- mikeash 9y agoNuclear war wouldn’t wipe out humanity. We, for dome value of “we,” would be around to talk about how it happened.
- minikites 9y ago>The Day After Ronald Reagan was only convinced nuclear war was bad after watching this TV movie starring Steve Guttenberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_policymakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_polic... >President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war".
- willyt 9y agoAs a kid I had nightmares for ages after watching 'when the wind blows'. I can't recommend that film highly enough.
- charlysl 9y agoThreads indeed, this one really brought it home: "the film was the first of its kind to depict a nuclear winter. Certain reviewers nominated Threads as the "film which comes closest to representing the full horror of nuclear war and its aftermath, as well as the catastrophic impact that the event would have on human culture" (from Wikipedia)
- vlaak 9y agoI recall a film I saw on TV as a kid called Testament which just killed me. It depicted a family slowly dying off after their town is bombed. I cried for a few nights after seeing it. I've never watched it since. I wonder if I could handle it now as an adult.