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I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that

by steven2012 13y ago

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (which I was too scared to watch), "Red Dawn", etc, just made things worse. It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians. It was basically like the 1950s Red-Scare all over again, or as some would say, today's war against terrorism.

ars 13y ago
Doesn't this say more about the morals of America vs Russia than anything else? Russians knew Americans would never do that to them, but Americans did not. (It doesn't matter if Russians would or would not, that's how they were viewed.)
- steven2012 13y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "morals". If you're implying that Russian knew that the US would never attack, but the Americans couldn't trust that the Russians would never attack, then that would still be propaganda at work. If some Americans actually believed that the Russians were so maniacal that they would attack, even in spite of Mutual Assured Destruction, then those Americans were foolishly suckered in by propaganda.
  - Helianthus 13y ago
    ... It's not like we have any clear examples where the world was moments away from nuclear war or anything. Now you might say that this was a result of American paranoia and that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But thinking that Russian expectations on the matter weren't naive is somewhat naive.
- cousin_it 13y ago
  Yeah, Russians thought better of Americans and also of themselves. (Nuclear war is suicidal for everyone, no matter who attacks first.)
cafard 13y ago
Might I suggest that your sample was a bit narrow? I can remember being pretty troubled at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (yes, I'm that old), seeing that our city was thought to be in range of said missiles by the chart on the front page of the paper. But from then on, most of the scare stuff seemed to be from the disarmament advocates--think of Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth and the nuclear winter it envisioned. Yes, there were the survivalist nuts, but there weren't that many.
jerf 13y ago
"It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians." Were they, though? There's a difference between "the bad thing didn't happen" and "the bad thing couldn't happen". Perhaps we were too concerned about it back then, but I sometimes fear we're too casual about it today. History strongly suggests the "total extinction" scenarios are overblown ("nuclear winter" is likely not a viable threat, though things could be cooled for a while, we know because other big particulate events didn't result in anywhere near the scary predictions, the dangers of fallout are generally grossly overstated), but they can still end civilization as we know it in mere minutes. They may "only" be able to wipe out all major cities on Earth rather than actually kill every human, but... that's still a bit of a problem.
- caf 13y ago
  Indeed. The Dead Hand is recommended reading (http://thedeadhandbook.com/ http://thedeadhandbook.com/)
steve19 13y ago
The Russians came close to initiating accidental nuclear war [0] Sure, nobody wanted a nuclear war (MAD [1]) but a mistake or oversight could easily have triggered an accidental war. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  "Intentional nuclear war based on false indications" would be more accurate than "Accidental nuclear war". For that incident, at least.
Houshalter 13y ago
Was the fear really overblown though? I mean it didn't happen, but several incidents came disturbingly close. And if we were destroyed, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Not being destroyed is the only observable result, so that observation tells you nothing about what the probabilities actually were.
rdtsc 13y ago
> He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. That is in large true. There was no constantl stream of news on dangers of evil empires and scare us with total annihilation. At least in the 80s it wasn't happening as far as I remember. "American imperialists" was still used in propaganda and news but it wasn't serious. Or rather few took propaganda seriously. Heck by 80's the hottest thing in Soviet Union were American jeans, music, products, movies. All that was underground, the forbidden fruit if you wish. Now what you should be worried about it that you have been brainwashed. There was no equivalent real life credible threat to the extent it was dramatized and inflated in American propaganda. You should be worried perhaps that in a country with supposedly a free press and open criticism people were mislead in a much large and degree than in a totalitarian communism country. CIA and other intelligence agencies chronically overestimated and inflated figures and threat models in order to get more funding. That should worry you. That is happening today as well when it comes to war on terror. Another point is a joke I like to tell people and (I've mentioned this before, so I apologize to those) -- when the Soviet Union fell we found out "everything they told us about Communism was a lie and everything they told us about the American style Capitalism was true". I'll leave it at that joke.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Could you be a little more specific about exactly how Americans were misled about the threat of war with the Soviet Union?
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    A few links: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastically-overestimated-soviet-capabilities/ http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastica... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B Also a quote from senator senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Raymond Garthoff, a C.I.A. military analyst, from early 2000s "there were consistent overestimates of the threat every year from 1978 to 1985." Even without this it is possibly just to look at the rhetoric and the push for an accelerated arms race, spending on the Star Wars programs. Just looking back at was found on the other side, its economy, rusting machinery, terrible inefficiency, military machines running on vacuum tubes. Was that threat level warranted? No, there was no equivalent threat on the other side to justify it.
tzs 13y ago
> It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians. Another possible interpretation of your data would be that Americans were better informed of the risks, and so were afraid. Russians, on the other hand, lived in a society with very tight control on all media, and so anything that might cause unrest was censored. There's more evidence for this interpretation than for yours. In particular, note that in the US we had access to numerous non-government sources of information and analysis, most of which agreed that nuclear war was a real risk.

ars 13y ago

Doesn't this say more about the morals of America vs Russia than anything else? Russians knew Americans would never do that to them, but Americans did not. (It doesn't matter if Russians would or would not, that's how they were viewed.)

steven2012 13y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "morals". If you're implying that Russian knew that the US would never attack, but the Americans couldn't trust that the Russians would never attack, then that would still be propaganda at work. If some Americans actually believed that the Russians were so maniacal that they would attack, even in spite of Mutual Assured Destruction, then those Americans were foolishly suckered in by propaganda.
- Helianthus 13y ago
  ... It's not like we have any clear examples where the world was moments away from nuclear war or anything. Now you might say that this was a result of American paranoia and that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. But thinking that Russian expectations on the matter weren't naive is somewhat naive.
cousin_it 13y ago
Yeah, Russians thought better of Americans and also of themselves. (Nuclear war is suicidal for everyone, no matter who attacks first.)

cafard 13y ago

Might I suggest that your sample was a bit narrow? I can remember being pretty troubled at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (yes, I'm that old), seeing that our city was thought to be in range of said missiles by the chart on the front page of the paper. But from then on, most of the scare stuff seemed to be from the disarmament advocates--think of Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth and the nuclear winter it envisioned. Yes, there were the survivalist nuts, but there weren't that many.

jerf 13y ago

"It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians." Were they, though? There's a difference between "the bad thing didn't happen" and "the bad thing couldn't happen". Perhaps we were too concerned about it back then, but I sometimes fear we're too casual about it today. History strongly suggests the "total extinction" scenarios are overblown ("nuclear winter" is likely not a viable threat, though things could be cooled for a while, we know because other big particulate events didn't result in anywhere near the scary predictions, the dangers of fallout are generally grossly overstated), but they can still end civilization as we know it in mere minutes. They may "only" be able to wipe out all major cities on Earth rather than actually kill every human, but... that's still a bit of a problem.

caf 13y ago
Indeed. The Dead Hand is recommended reading (http://thedeadhandbook.com/ http://thedeadhandbook.com/)

steve19 13y ago

The Russians came close to initiating accidental nuclear war [0] Sure, nobody wanted a nuclear war (MAD [1]) but a mistake or oversight could easily have triggered an accidental war. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

dragonwriter 13y ago
"Intentional nuclear war based on false indications" would be more accurate than "Accidental nuclear war". For that incident, at least.

Houshalter 13y ago

Was the fear really overblown though? I mean it didn't happen, but several incidents came disturbingly close. And if we were destroyed, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Not being destroyed is the only observable result, so that observation tells you nothing about what the probabilities actually were.

rdtsc 13y ago

> He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. That is in large true. There was no constantl stream of news on dangers of evil empires and scare us with total annihilation. At least in the 80s it wasn't happening as far as I remember. "American imperialists" was still used in propaganda and news but it wasn't serious. Or rather few took propaganda seriously. Heck by 80's the hottest thing in Soviet Union were American jeans, music, products, movies. All that was underground, the forbidden fruit if you wish. Now what you should be worried about it that you have been brainwashed. There was no equivalent real life credible threat to the extent it was dramatized and inflated in American propaganda. You should be worried perhaps that in a country with supposedly a free press and open criticism people were mislead in a much large and degree than in a totalitarian communism country. CIA and other intelligence agencies chronically overestimated and inflated figures and threat models in order to get more funding. That should worry you. That is happening today as well when it comes to war on terror. Another point is a joke I like to tell people and (I've mentioned this before, so I apologize to those) -- when the Soviet Union fell we found out "everything they told us about Communism was a lie and everything they told us about the American style Capitalism was true". I'll leave it at that joke.

tptacek 13y ago
Could you be a little more specific about exactly how Americans were misled about the threat of war with the Soviet Union?
- rdtsc 13y ago
  A few links: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastically-overestimated-soviet-capabilities/ http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/28/cia-documents-us-drastica... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B Also a quote from senator senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Raymond Garthoff, a C.I.A. military analyst, from early 2000s "there were consistent overestimates of the threat every year from 1978 to 1985." Even without this it is possibly just to look at the rhetoric and the push for an accelerated arms race, spending on the Star Wars programs. Just looking back at was found on the other side, its economy, rusting machinery, terrible inefficiency, military machines running on vacuum tubes. Was that threat level warranted? No, there was no equivalent threat on the other side to justify it.

tzs 13y ago

> It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians. Another possible interpretation of your data would be that Americans were better informed of the risks, and so were afraid. Russians, on the other hand, lived in a society with very tight control on all media, and so anything that might cause unrest was censored. There's more evidence for this interpretation than for yours. In particular, note that in the US we had access to numerous non-government sources of information and analysis, most of which agreed that nuclear war was a real risk.