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Watching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs, making the same preparations (down to the anti-flash whit

Watching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs, making the same preparations (down to the anti-flash white paint on the aircraft), executing the same commands -- all just normal people who were caught up in a terrible arms race. Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition. Makes you think about how, in the age where technological achievement can so quickly outpace the control of individuals, yet also relies on those same individuals to make it happen -- how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. It's no profoundly new sentiment, but in some ways we need to overcome our caveman instincts when we're stocked with nuclear weapons.

Haga 6y ago
Fermi said it first.. Not gonna happen. And the panopticon can not prevent the abuse of new exponential. A fine mousetrap to catch a species in..
yareally 6y ago
Reminds me of the TV series, The Americans[1]. It did a great job of humanizing people on both sides of the Cold War. Sure, there were those that were blinded by their nationalism, but a majority on both sides we just trying to live their lives in a not so dissimilar way from the other. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans
- narrationbox 6y ago
  Try the Russian version "Adaptasiya" (Adaptation). We use it for testing speech transcription and machine translation since there are no official English subtitles for it. The show's pretty good. http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/ http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/
  - atombender 6y ago
    Where can one stream or download this? Who is "we", by the way?
    - andresgottlieb 6y ago
      Narrationbox.com
    - throwaway8941 6y ago
      https://rutracker.org/forum/tracker.php?f=9&nm=%E0%E4%E0%EF%F2%E0%F6%E8%FF https://rutracker.org/forum/tracker.php?f=9&nm=%E0%E4%E0%EF%... Personally, I wouldn't watch anything from that channel. It's infamous for its low quality programming.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  What I like the most in it is the realism. Apart from the fact that, for such high-value assets, they get far too much exposure.
  - claydavisss 6y ago
    Realism? They were basically serial killers. The Americans couldn't ever figure out what world it was portraying...it straddled both reality and James-Bond but with no consistency. The show would have been more acceptable had their activities been mostly limited to nonviolent espionage...but there's no way any government would have utilized the same operatives to kill dozens of normal citizens.
vbezhenar 6y ago
The fact that there was no major war with country possessing nuclear weapons makes me think that nuclear weapon is a very good thing to have. Imagine North Korea without nuclear weapons. They would be democratized in a blink of an eye.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  What you say is true, but it would be ahistorical not to remark that the genesis of North Korea was the previous "democratization" of the Korean peninsula that resulted in stomach churning war crimes, the destruction of nearly every habitable structure, and the execution of innumerable civilians. NK's "Juche" survivalist ideology is perfectly understandable given what they had to rebuild from. I think we should not so casually make remarks that imply a military intervention would do anything to benefit the Korean people. There's even a nuclear tie-in as Gen. MacArthur was pressing Truman to drop a necklace of "30-50" bombs in order to irradiate the land and make it impassable for 60 years. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/macarthur-really-did-want-use-nuclear-weapons-win-korean-war-135847 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/macarthur-really-did-...
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    I'm not supporting North Korea, I'm just suggesting that nuclear weapons works for them, so it must be pretty effective thing. If not for nuclear weapons, who knows how world would look today. USA and USSR would definitely fight each other, killing thousands of people in process.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      I agree with you regarding holding nukes keeping them from being invaded (so called "nuclear peace"). I was referring more to the part where you said "democratized in the blink of an eye" which could be interpreted as a positive thing. Not trying to dunk on you, just that this kind of phrasing is how Americans let themselves be led into wars.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Guthur 6y ago
I think it's also clear from the major distinctions between the sources of those "people at the top" that there is very little uniqueness about them. The soviet union tore down an existing ruling class and replaced it with another "egalitarian" group that really acted in a way that was not so different in so many ways.
- narrator 6y ago
  The Soviet system was kind of like capitalism, but just with one corporation and getting fired meant going to prison or being executed and you weren't allowed to quit (immigrate out).
  - Guthur 6y ago
    I don't think it's actually anything to do with capitalism. It's all about having a an agenda and projecting that onto others which is always the fundamental flaw in professed egalitarian ideologies, at some point you'll have to take something from someone that is not willing to give up or exploit someone for the "greater good" and at that stage you'll be no different than the "tyrants" you replaced. The minute humans are in charge and setting the rules the fallible flaw has been introduced.
    - b4ke 6y ago
      Do you believe that humans are the being at the end of the chain of control?
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      There was nothing egalitarian in the Soviet leadership, with some historical debate about maybe Lenin (though even with Lenin, one of his first acts after coming to power was to dissolve the Soviets, the democratic, independent factory-ruling councils that had sprung up). With Stalin definitely, the only goal was complete control over the population and over the state. Sure, egalitarianism was paid lip service, but it was entirely propaganda. In fact, the proper historical name for the economic system used in the USSR is "state capitalism". You still have corporations that employ people for a fixed wage, but instead of being controlled by private interests, they are controlled by bureaucrats appointed by the ruling dictators. Socialism would have meant that the worker-owners get payed based on the profits of the factory, and that they have a direct say in how the factory is operated. In the USSR, no one had any say in how anything was operated, save for the unelected ruling elite.
TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Though I don’t believe in silver bullets, I like the idea of decentralized bottom up organizing as a way to reduce the power of anyone “at the top”.
akira2501 6y ago
> how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. Or to find a way of life that doesn't include "people at the top" as the primary decision making apparatus. > but in some ways we need to overcome our caveman instincts when we're stocked with nuclear weapons. In a lot of ways, it is our caveman instincts that make mutually assured destruction a viable political option. It's probably what also prevents us from using scorched earth as a common warfare tactic. This seems a bit like looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  > Or to find a way of life that doesn't include "people at the top" as the primary decision making apparatus. How exactly does that work? “Mr. President, a foreign nuclear submarine just surfaced off the coast of Florida. They are not responding to our hails and their launch tubes are open. What do we do?” “Well we need to have a referendum and ask everyone, regardless of training, intelligence, and with no clearance or access to intelligence briefings what orders I should issue.” The point of having leaders is to lead. Humans don’t do well without leaders. The most successful leaderless movement we’ve seen was the Occupy movement and nobody would ever call that any kind of success. It’s is in our nature as much as it is in the mathematics that describes our society.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Millitary-style leaders will probably keep being a necessity. But perhaps in a less top-down controlled society, there would be less chance that things get to the point of the submarine surfacing at all. Most large conflicts in human history have been about imperialism - one powerful ruling class trying to expand their power to new lands. Without the ruling class, it is hard to imagine millions of people caring whether they "control" some piece of land thousands of miles away. Would the US have gone to Vietnam if there weren't a ruling class that cared about extending their influence? To Irak? To Afghanistan? To El Salvador? Would they have orchestrated coups against the democratic leadership of Iran to protect BP's operations, and reinstalled their ousted absolutist monarchy? Would they have assassinated Iranian generals?
ISL 6y ago
When walking through the Pima Air and Space Museum, where NATO and Soviet-bloc aircraft of matching generations often sit almost side-by-side, the similarity of the aircraft was striking. While some of the similarity can be explained by espionage, much of it comes from the confrontation between ingenuity and Nature. These instruments of war, built by professionals who deeply respected their adversaries, memorialize the extent to which each side was desperate to prevent the other from gaining an operational edge. It is the science of life and death, confronting not entropy (as we do in the case of Covid-19) but other humans. As a scientist who builds instrumentation, looking particularly into the landing-gear wells and bomb-bays, I felt great connection with those who built the instruments. People, just like me, built these things because they felt that they had to in order to defend their homes. I have promised myself never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked -- devoting instead a portion of my time to non-proliferation work -- but it is easy to see how humanity reaches such a point. I see in today's era of closing borders and increasing nationalism the prospect of conflict not seen since the 1940s. Tectonic stresses have built for decades; we must find ways to relax them gently in a way that is beneficial to everyone, so that humanity might prosper and thrive for generations to come.
- sjg007 6y ago
  The NIKE missile silo is interesting too. They have some information about the armaments of the US and the USSR. From what I recall, or what at least left an impression, the US had technically better missile systems that were reliable but less nukes overall. In contrast, the USSR had worse targeting and less reliable missiles and so was relying on a very large number of nukes. I remember thinking about the probabilities.
  - pstrateman 6y ago
    The US actually had many more and much better nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but they thought the soviets were much further along than they really were.
    - 29athrowaway 6y ago
mc32 6y ago
A related problem is how to prevent over cavepeople from stocking their own caves with these weapons. What do we do about the North Korean cave or the Iranian cave?
- ohazi 6y ago
  There's a cost to answering this question wrong too -- the US spent the better part of last century toppling governments and installing sock-puppets, and it led to resentment, terrorism, and revolutions that brought even worse governments.
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  That problem seems to rely on ignorance/a lack of perspective. That can be fixed with education/travel, both currently limited.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Most countries are most powerfully concerned with protecting themselves. Both North Korea and Iran are mostly stocking weaponry and military knowledge because they are facing constant threats from the world's most powerful military that their leadership will be annihilated. Iran is constantly being threatened with the use of force by one of the most powerful and belligerent countries in the region (Israel). It has a history of having its leaders deposed by the USA. It has a history of making deals with the USA, keeping its end of the bargain, and discovering the USA had no intention of doing so (while accusing Iran of being the problem). It is one of the only places where their particular religion is accepted in the region, with extreme intolerance of it from one of the other powerful nations in the region (Saudi Arabia). And it is one of the few countries who still care about the fate of the Palestinians.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
StanislavPetrov 6y ago
> how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. I'd argue that its more important for us to imbue everyone with a sense of personal responsibility. Instill in everyone that they are personally responsible for everything that they do without regard for what anyone else does. >executing the same commands -- all just normal people who were caught up in a terrible arms race. Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition. >Watching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs We should teach our children that, "getting caught up" is never an excuse or a mitigation of their own personal responsibility for their actions. Whether they are motivated to participate in bad behavior out of duty, ambition or just "doing their job" - their motivations are ultimately irrelevant - they always remain personally responsible for their actions regardless of their motivations. Unfortunately this is not a popular position because so few of us are willing to own total responsibility for our own actions. Its much easier to wave a finger in the air and blame "leadership" for our behavior, or point to the fact that very few people take explicit personal responsibility for the results of their behavior, and use that as a rationalization for not taking responsibility themselves. Many will argue that they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because their individual actions are inconsequential in the big scheme of things, but I would argue that every individual's action is infinitely consequential in terms of their own personal responsibility. We are all completely responsible for what we do as individuals and not responsible for what others do (and consequently cannot use the bad behavior of others to excuse or mitigate our responsibility for our own bad behavior). You cannot willingly be a cog in the machine and at the same time disavow the product that the machine turns out.
- rdtsc 6y ago
  Very well said. Of course, I couldn't help but notice your username too :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov It was interesting how the Soviets had built a dead-hand system caller Perimeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand, but then didn't seem to advertise its existence to the West, which would make sense to do typically. And some believe (wiki has a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Zheleznyakov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Zheleznyakov) that it was to give the people at the top a better chance to react more rationally. In a way, it was to allow the possible "Petrovs" in their midst to do the right thing.
microcolonel 6y ago
I count us all as lucky that the two cold war states were the lucky picks that would not be overcome by the urge to find out what happens.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Leslie Groves appears (from his own memoir) to have had the urge to find out what happens. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24078815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24078815
m0zg 6y ago
That arms race is the only reason why we haven't had a major war in the last 75 years, and won't have one in the foreseeable future. AKA Long Peace.
- baddox 6y ago
  Just thinking out loud here, but how long would this level of having no “major” wars have to last for it to have been worth it if it ends in nuclear war?
  - m0zg 6y ago
    It's not how long they _last_, it's how many lives they take. USSR alone lost some 25 million people in WW2, mostly young, able bodied men. Some estimates put the casualty count even higher. Imagine the impact of taking basically all military aged men in the United States and sending them into a massive, five year long meat grinder. That's what this war was like for the USSR and other countries that couldn't wait until 1944 to directly intervene. So yeah, I think it's great that we can no longer have major wars, and I think it's worth having the nukes if that's what it takes to deter others.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > That arms race is the only reason why we haven't had a major war in the last 75 years, and won't have one in the foreseeable future. The Cold War was one of largest wars in history by casualties, on the same rough order as (and possibly ahead of) WWI. Nuclear weapons are a big part of why it was popular to maintain the rather paper-thin fiction that it was simply a series of separate conflicts that happened to have the same parties standing behind the principal combatants (or involving at most one of those backers directly).
  - holoduke 6y ago
    Do you recall one event during cold war where 65.000 men were killed in just one day?. Or how compares the 40.000.000 casualties during ww1 with the coldwar?.
bouncycastle 6y ago
Most of these guys (and their parents) just witnessed two world wars with the worst atrocities of all time being committed. Context is everything.
est31 6y ago
> Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition. Don't forget the fear component! > Stalin was fascinated by the thought of a “super bomb” and set up an atomic bomb project and put Lavrentiy Beria change and told him that he had five years to produce an atomic bomb or face the consequences. > Whilst the rest of the Soviet Union suffered shortages of men, materials and food, Beria setup a secret town and put in the top scientists to work on the atomic bomb with no expense was spared. Beria had two lists, one for those who would get promotion for their work and the other for those that failed, they would face the gulag or execution. https://curious-droid.com/1209/how-the-atomic-race-was-won/ https://curious-droid.com/1209/how-the-atomic-race-was-won/ Another "highlight" was Korolev, one of the key designers of the Soviet rocket program, being sent to the gulag. Some of the design work he did was from the gulag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  The Tsar Bomb started development in 1961 and at that time the fear component became much lower (aka Khrushchev Thaw). Both Stalin and Beria died in 1953.
hugh-avherald 6y ago
| how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. At the time this was filmed, "those at the top" were extremely focused on knot leading their countries down the path to war.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
I like what you said so much, to digress just a bit two thoughts: - I was thinking about the same lines few days ago watching coloring of Roman statues, and how they look lifelike, and then coloring of WW1 photos, and how it looks as business as usual, no fuss no drama, just another ordinary day - sky is blue birds are singing and humans are having war. - 2nd train of thoughts were some fiction "theory" how we humans were created by aliens as working force. And then somehow amusing thought was that if you have bionic robots or mechanic, but after they served their purpose (mining for instance) they need to dismantle themselves, all you need is to add a self-destruct feature, but feature must be part of the character so they will not suspect. So instead you as overload alien creating killer switch and risking they going after you, they will do it on their own ... To go back to main subject, most of us are unaware are the things we do good or bad, we work to feed family or just to survive. Maybe some guy out there thinks he is working in strict chemical factory but in fact he is working for a drug lord or some dictator that is creating chemical weapon. For him not feeding his family is bad thing, and he does the job he is educated for. Very much like biblical "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Most of us do not, I am working on a banking software... maybe it will create misery putting in spiral debt some family that will become homeless...
Razengan 6y ago
> Makes you think about how, in the age where technological achievement can so quickly outpace the control of individuals, yet also relies on those same individuals to make it happen -- how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. You would have to convince everyone that everyone has a right to live and survive and have basic comforts. If those scientists and engineers refuse to work on weapons, how will they make money and put food on their table? They won't even be allowed to walk out if they know secrets. If they were to detach from their society and go forage in the wild and attempt to start a self-sufficient community, they won't be able to defend against government, military or criminals (a redundant list you might say but I digress). You have to convince the soldiers who enforce the will of "the people at the top", but then how would they earn a living?

Haga 6y ago

Fermi said it first.. Not gonna happen. And the panopticon can not prevent the abuse of new exponential. A fine mousetrap to catch a species in..

yareally 6y ago

Reminds me of the TV series, The Americans[1]. It did a great job of humanizing people on both sides of the Cold War. Sure, there were those that were blinded by their nationalism, but a majority on both sides we just trying to live their lives in a not so dissimilar way from the other. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans

narrationbox 6y ago
Try the Russian version "Adaptasiya" (Adaptation). We use it for testing speech transcription and machine translation since there are no official English subtitles for it. The show's pretty good. http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/ http://screeningroom.gpm-rtv.com/tnt/adaptation/
- atombender 6y ago
  Where can one stream or download this? Who is "we", by the way?
  - andresgottlieb 6y ago
    Narrationbox.com
  - throwaway8941 6y ago
    https://rutracker.org/forum/tracker.php?f=9&nm=%E0%E4%E0%EF%F2%E0%F6%E8%FF https://rutracker.org/forum/tracker.php?f=9&nm=%E0%E4%E0%EF%... Personally, I wouldn't watch anything from that channel. It's infamous for its low quality programming.
rbanffy 6y ago
What I like the most in it is the realism. Apart from the fact that, for such high-value assets, they get far too much exposure.
- claydavisss 6y ago
  Realism? They were basically serial killers. The Americans couldn't ever figure out what world it was portraying...it straddled both reality and James-Bond but with no consistency. The show would have been more acceptable had their activities been mostly limited to nonviolent espionage...but there's no way any government would have utilized the same operatives to kill dozens of normal citizens.

vbezhenar 6y ago

The fact that there was no major war with country possessing nuclear weapons makes me think that nuclear weapon is a very good thing to have. Imagine North Korea without nuclear weapons. They would be democratized in a blink of an eye.

tehjoker 6y ago
What you say is true, but it would be ahistorical not to remark that the genesis of North Korea was the previous "democratization" of the Korean peninsula that resulted in stomach churning war crimes, the destruction of nearly every habitable structure, and the execution of innumerable civilians. NK's "Juche" survivalist ideology is perfectly understandable given what they had to rebuild from. I think we should not so casually make remarks that imply a military intervention would do anything to benefit the Korean people. There's even a nuclear tie-in as Gen. MacArthur was pressing Truman to drop a necklace of "30-50" bombs in order to irradiate the land and make it impassable for 60 years. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/macarthur-really-did-want-use-nuclear-weapons-win-korean-war-135847 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/macarthur-really-did-...
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  I'm not supporting North Korea, I'm just suggesting that nuclear weapons works for them, so it must be pretty effective thing. If not for nuclear weapons, who knows how world would look today. USA and USSR would definitely fight each other, killing thousands of people in process.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    I agree with you regarding holding nukes keeping them from being invaded (so called "nuclear peace"). I was referring more to the part where you said "democratized in the blink of an eye" which could be interpreted as a positive thing. Not trying to dunk on you, just that this kind of phrasing is how Americans let themselves be led into wars.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Guthur 6y ago

I think it's also clear from the major distinctions between the sources of those "people at the top" that there is very little uniqueness about them. The soviet union tore down an existing ruling class and replaced it with another "egalitarian" group that really acted in a way that was not so different in so many ways.

narrator 6y ago
The Soviet system was kind of like capitalism, but just with one corporation and getting fired meant going to prison or being executed and you weren't allowed to quit (immigrate out).
- Guthur 6y ago
  I don't think it's actually anything to do with capitalism. It's all about having a an agenda and projecting that onto others which is always the fundamental flaw in professed egalitarian ideologies, at some point you'll have to take something from someone that is not willing to give up or exploit someone for the "greater good" and at that stage you'll be no different than the "tyrants" you replaced. The minute humans are in charge and setting the rules the fallible flaw has been introduced.
  - b4ke 6y ago
    Do you believe that humans are the being at the end of the chain of control?
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    There was nothing egalitarian in the Soviet leadership, with some historical debate about maybe Lenin (though even with Lenin, one of his first acts after coming to power was to dissolve the Soviets, the democratic, independent factory-ruling councils that had sprung up). With Stalin definitely, the only goal was complete control over the population and over the state. Sure, egalitarianism was paid lip service, but it was entirely propaganda. In fact, the proper historical name for the economic system used in the USSR is "state capitalism". You still have corporations that employ people for a fixed wage, but instead of being controlled by private interests, they are controlled by bureaucrats appointed by the ruling dictators. Socialism would have meant that the worker-owners get payed based on the profits of the factory, and that they have a direct say in how the factory is operated. In the USSR, no one had any say in how anything was operated, save for the unelected ruling elite.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago

Though I don’t believe in silver bullets, I like the idea of decentralized bottom up organizing as a way to reduce the power of anyone “at the top”.

akira2501 6y ago

> how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. Or to find a way of life that doesn't include "people at the top" as the primary decision making apparatus. > but in some ways we need to overcome our caveman instincts when we're stocked with nuclear weapons. In a lot of ways, it is our caveman instincts that make mutually assured destruction a viable political option. It's probably what also prevents us from using scorched earth as a common warfare tactic. This seems a bit like looking a gift-horse in the mouth.

IgorPartola 6y ago
> Or to find a way of life that doesn't include "people at the top" as the primary decision making apparatus. How exactly does that work? “Mr. President, a foreign nuclear submarine just surfaced off the coast of Florida. They are not responding to our hails and their launch tubes are open. What do we do?” “Well we need to have a referendum and ask everyone, regardless of training, intelligence, and with no clearance or access to intelligence briefings what orders I should issue.” The point of having leaders is to lead. Humans don’t do well without leaders. The most successful leaderless movement we’ve seen was the Occupy movement and nobody would ever call that any kind of success. It’s is in our nature as much as it is in the mathematics that describes our society.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Millitary-style leaders will probably keep being a necessity. But perhaps in a less top-down controlled society, there would be less chance that things get to the point of the submarine surfacing at all. Most large conflicts in human history have been about imperialism - one powerful ruling class trying to expand their power to new lands. Without the ruling class, it is hard to imagine millions of people caring whether they "control" some piece of land thousands of miles away. Would the US have gone to Vietnam if there weren't a ruling class that cared about extending their influence? To Irak? To Afghanistan? To El Salvador? Would they have orchestrated coups against the democratic leadership of Iran to protect BP's operations, and reinstalled their ousted absolutist monarchy? Would they have assassinated Iranian generals?

ISL 6y ago

When walking through the Pima Air and Space Museum, where NATO and Soviet-bloc aircraft of matching generations often sit almost side-by-side, the similarity of the aircraft was striking. While some of the similarity can be explained by espionage, much of it comes from the confrontation between ingenuity and Nature. These instruments of war, built by professionals who deeply respected their adversaries, memorialize the extent to which each side was desperate to prevent the other from gaining an operational edge. It is the science of life and death, confronting not entropy (as we do in the case of Covid-19) but other humans. As a scientist who builds instrumentation, looking particularly into the landing-gear wells and bomb-bays, I felt great connection with those who built the instruments. People, just like me, built these things because they felt that they had to in order to defend their homes. I have promised myself never to build weapons unless the United States is attacked -- devoting instead a portion of my time to non-proliferation work -- but it is easy to see how humanity reaches such a point. I see in today's era of closing borders and increasing nationalism the prospect of conflict not seen since the 1940s. Tectonic stresses have built for decades; we must find ways to relax them gently in a way that is beneficial to everyone, so that humanity might prosper and thrive for generations to come.

sjg007 6y ago
The NIKE missile silo is interesting too. They have some information about the armaments of the US and the USSR. From what I recall, or what at least left an impression, the US had technically better missile systems that were reliable but less nukes overall. In contrast, the USSR had worse targeting and less reliable missiles and so was relying on a very large number of nukes. I remember thinking about the probabilities.
- pstrateman 6y ago
  The US actually had many more and much better nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but they thought the soviets were much further along than they really were.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

A related problem is how to prevent over cavepeople from stocking their own caves with these weapons. What do we do about the North Korean cave or the Iranian cave?

ohazi 6y ago
There's a cost to answering this question wrong too -- the US spent the better part of last century toppling governments and installing sock-puppets, and it led to resentment, terrorism, and revolutions that brought even worse governments.
dontcarethrow2 6y ago
That problem seems to rely on ignorance/a lack of perspective. That can be fixed with education/travel, both currently limited.
tsimionescu 6y ago
Most countries are most powerfully concerned with protecting themselves. Both North Korea and Iran are mostly stocking weaponry and military knowledge because they are facing constant threats from the world's most powerful military that their leadership will be annihilated. Iran is constantly being threatened with the use of force by one of the most powerful and belligerent countries in the region (Israel). It has a history of having its leaders deposed by the USA. It has a history of making deals with the USA, keeping its end of the bargain, and discovering the USA had no intention of doing so (while accusing Iran of being the problem). It is one of the only places where their particular religion is accepted in the region, with extreme intolerance of it from one of the other powerful nations in the region (Saudi Arabia). And it is one of the few countries who still care about the fate of the Palestinians.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

StanislavPetrov 6y ago

> how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. I'd argue that its more important for us to imbue everyone with a sense of personal responsibility. Instill in everyone that they are personally responsible for everything that they do without regard for what anyone else does. >executing the same commands -- all just normal people who were caught up in a terrible arms race. Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition. >Watching this film, if you turn off the narrator, you see the same guys as our guys, doing their jobs We should teach our children that, "getting caught up" is never an excuse or a mitigation of their own personal responsibility for their actions. Whether they are motivated to participate in bad behavior out of duty, ambition or just "doing their job" - their motivations are ultimately irrelevant - they always remain personally responsible for their actions regardless of their motivations. Unfortunately this is not a popular position because so few of us are willing to own total responsibility for our own actions. Its much easier to wave a finger in the air and blame "leadership" for our behavior, or point to the fact that very few people take explicit personal responsibility for the results of their behavior, and use that as a rationalization for not taking responsibility themselves. Many will argue that they shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because their individual actions are inconsequential in the big scheme of things, but I would argue that every individual's action is infinitely consequential in terms of their own personal responsibility. We are all completely responsible for what we do as individuals and not responsible for what others do (and consequently cannot use the bad behavior of others to excuse or mitigate our responsibility for our own bad behavior). You cannot willingly be a cog in the machine and at the same time disavow the product that the machine turns out.

rdtsc 6y ago
Very well said. Of course, I couldn't help but notice your username too :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov It was interesting how the Soviets had built a dead-hand system caller Perimeter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand, but then didn't seem to advertise its existence to the West, which would make sense to do typically. And some believe (wiki has a quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Zheleznyakov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Zheleznyakov) that it was to give the people at the top a better chance to react more rationally. In a way, it was to allow the possible "Petrovs" in their midst to do the right thing.

microcolonel 6y ago

I count us all as lucky that the two cold war states were the lucky picks that would not be overcome by the urge to find out what happens.

082349872349872 6y ago
Leslie Groves appears (from his own memoir) to have had the urge to find out what happens. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24078815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24078815

m0zg 6y ago

That arms race is the only reason why we haven't had a major war in the last 75 years, and won't have one in the foreseeable future. AKA Long Peace.

baddox 6y ago
Just thinking out loud here, but how long would this level of having no “major” wars have to last for it to have been worth it if it ends in nuclear war?
- m0zg 6y ago
  It's not how long they _last_, it's how many lives they take. USSR alone lost some 25 million people in WW2, mostly young, able bodied men. Some estimates put the casualty count even higher. Imagine the impact of taking basically all military aged men in the United States and sending them into a massive, five year long meat grinder. That's what this war was like for the USSR and other countries that couldn't wait until 1944 to directly intervene. So yeah, I think it's great that we can no longer have major wars, and I think it's worth having the nukes if that's what it takes to deter others.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> That arms race is the only reason why we haven't had a major war in the last 75 years, and won't have one in the foreseeable future. The Cold War was one of largest wars in history by casualties, on the same rough order as (and possibly ahead of) WWI. Nuclear weapons are a big part of why it was popular to maintain the rather paper-thin fiction that it was simply a series of separate conflicts that happened to have the same parties standing behind the principal combatants (or involving at most one of those backers directly).
- holoduke 6y ago
  Do you recall one event during cold war where 65.000 men were killed in just one day?. Or how compares the 40.000.000 casualties during ww1 with the coldwar?.

bouncycastle 6y ago

Most of these guys (and their parents) just witnessed two world wars with the worst atrocities of all time being committed. Context is everything.

est31 6y ago

> Some of them out of duty, others out of ambition. Don't forget the fear component! > Stalin was fascinated by the thought of a “super bomb” and set up an atomic bomb project and put Lavrentiy Beria change and told him that he had five years to produce an atomic bomb or face the consequences. > Whilst the rest of the Soviet Union suffered shortages of men, materials and food, Beria setup a secret town and put in the top scientists to work on the atomic bomb with no expense was spared. Beria had two lists, one for those who would get promotion for their work and the other for those that failed, they would face the gulag or execution. https://curious-droid.com/1209/how-the-atomic-race-was-won/ https://curious-droid.com/1209/how-the-atomic-race-was-won/ Another "highlight" was Korolev, one of the key designers of the Soviet rocket program, being sent to the gulag. Some of the design work he did was from the gulag. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

kubanczyk 6y ago
The Tsar Bomb started development in 1961 and at that time the fear component became much lower (aka Khrushchev Thaw). Both Stalin and Beria died in 1953.

hugh-avherald 6y ago

| how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. At the time this was filmed, "those at the top" were extremely focused on knot leading their countries down the path to war.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

I like what you said so much, to digress just a bit two thoughts: - I was thinking about the same lines few days ago watching coloring of Roman statues, and how they look lifelike, and then coloring of WW1 photos, and how it looks as business as usual, no fuss no drama, just another ordinary day - sky is blue birds are singing and humans are having war. - 2nd train of thoughts were some fiction "theory" how we humans were created by aliens as working force. And then somehow amusing thought was that if you have bionic robots or mechanic, but after they served their purpose (mining for instance) they need to dismantle themselves, all you need is to add a self-destruct feature, but feature must be part of the character so they will not suspect. So instead you as overload alien creating killer switch and risking they going after you, they will do it on their own ... To go back to main subject, most of us are unaware are the things we do good or bad, we work to feed family or just to survive. Maybe some guy out there thinks he is working in strict chemical factory but in fact he is working for a drug lord or some dictator that is creating chemical weapon. For him not feeding his family is bad thing, and he does the job he is educated for. Very much like biblical "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Most of us do not, I am working on a banking software... maybe it will create misery putting in spiral debt some family that will become homeless...

Razengan 6y ago

> Makes you think about how, in the age where technological achievement can so quickly outpace the control of individuals, yet also relies on those same individuals to make it happen -- how important it will be for us to somehow find a way for the people at the top to not lead everyone else down a wrong path. You would have to convince everyone that everyone has a right to live and survive and have basic comforts. If those scientists and engineers refuse to work on weapons, how will they make money and put food on their table? They won't even be allowed to walk out if they know secrets. If they were to detach from their society and go forage in the wild and attempt to start a self-sufficient community, they won't be able to defend against government, military or criminals (a redundant list you might say but I digress). You have to convince the soldiers who enforce the will of "the people at the top", but then how would they earn a living?