14 ms·

Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact

375 points by ux-app 12y ago

geichel 12y ago
This is also true for Enemy of the State. Watch it again. Your jaw will hit the floor: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/
- swartkrans 12y ago
  > This is also true for Enemy of the State. Uh, no? None of what happened in the movie is based on a real story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)#Real_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)#Real...
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Who said anything about "based on a real story"? Did you read TFA? Dr. Strangelove's plot is not based on a real story either. It's about getting the details right, not about being based on any particular real life story or persons.
- rickdale 12y ago
  You are right. I just watched it the other night and I was blown away by the accuracy at which the movie portrayed surveillance and even wondered if that movie was giving out more information than what the government wants out nowadays compared to back then. We were more skeptical that these things existed back then, but now that we know they do it makes that movie dead on.
  - tripzilch 12y ago
    I remember watching this film, just a few years after it came out and thinking, "All of this is technically possible ... but they probably wouldn't go that far, or have the infrastructure in place". Now I know better. I was indeed recently pondering I should watch it again, just to see what my reaction would be.
    - kybernetyk 12y ago
      Heh, I watched it when it came out and thought it was mostly the typical hollywood computer sci-fi they put into computer films to make it more exciting for the average viewer. Sadly I was wrong.
  - drawkbox 12y ago
    It is strange how in the US we really do get many of our issues out in film, both propaganda and progression. Movies are great and let people experience an issue through a story. Movies are America's original pressure release valve to deal with issues and dream, could be one of our secrets to success over time. The internet is also one of those releases, the whole world needed it. Books weren't used or pop enough to really be the cultural tracking. Movies really do tell our history. Enemy of the State also had lots of starting actors, yes Jack Black was a NSA agent linking your transactions, Jamie Kennedy, Seth Green also agents.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  Enemy of the State is a still a Michael Bay film though. A bit restrained, but still a bit too explosion-ey.
  - robterrell 12y ago
    Nope. Tony Scott. But, I get what you mean. Still, it's got this thin film of political intrigue / thriller across the top that really holds the plot together. Bay would have skimmed that right off. Also, I'm not a fan of Tony Scott at all, but boy can cast the hell out of a movie. He's got great actors in every tiny role.
    - JetSpiegel 12y ago
      Sorry, they all looks the same to me. Those directors, I mean. Bay did The Island, and it suffers from the same thing, it could have been awesome with other director.
  - kchoudhu 12y ago
    It's based on The Conversation (or vaguely related to it?). I remember being mildly entertained when Gene Hackman turned up partway through the movie.
    - JetSpiegel 12y ago
      Hmm, that film was on my watchlist, I'll take a look.
- jeangenie 12y ago
  I'll have to rewatch. My family and I were also discussing this same idea in relation to Minority Report. Are these instances of life imitating art?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Minority Report is (good) SF, remote precognition seems far-fetched at best (hence the 'F' in SF). Enemy of the State is more of a 'could happen' scenario, it contains no technology that wasn't present when the movie was made afaik.
  - lukifer 12y ago
    We're not to Minority Report yet, but we're laying the groundwork: collecting massive data-sets that will someday be used for Bayesian predictive algorithms to determine pre-crime. While the current population would vehemently reject such a scheme, it's quite feasible that public perception will shift after a particularly shocking crime/terrorism incident which "could have been prevented".
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  I also recommend watching Coppola's 1974 film The Conversation, which was a heavy influence for Enemy of the State: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/ The technology presented is obsolete, but the film is far more haunting because it's a deeply psychological experience.
EvanAnderson 12y ago
If this article piqued your interest definitely have a look at "The Dead Hand" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307387844 http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307...).
- dmpk2k 12y ago
  "The Dead Hand" combined with "Command and Control" (http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788/ http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...) makes for very sobering reading. Put the two together, and it's a genuine miracle that nothing bad happened. Of course, we're not out of the woods... Both are excellent books, BTW, so I agree with the parent poster's recommendation.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    Also "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - which is pretty alarming even when we know how it all worked out: http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev/dp/1400078911 http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...
coldtea 12y ago
That all those official denials and assurances at the time were BS and lies, serves as a good reminder for how to treat similar assurances in the present.
cstross 12y ago
Young folks today just don't believe how downright surreal (and scary) the cold war was to live through. Look, just read this wikipedia entry about the British Blue Peacock nuclear device, and boggle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock Yes. It's a chicken-heated atomic landmine. Not a joke: it was a Real Thing. And so was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device... The M-29 Davy Crockett tactical nuclear recoilless rifle. (Jeep-mounted, no PALs, the rocket's flight range was less than its lethal radius of effect: the crew were supposed to fire it over a hill then dive under their jeep for cover.) People not only imagined these things, they built them and deployed them in the stone-cold expectation of using them in anger.
- pcrh 12y ago
  That reminds me of the pigeon-guided missile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
  - mpweiher 12y ago
    I see your pigeon and raise you a bat. As in bat-shit-crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb When they tested them, the bats incinerated an Air Force base.
- simonsarris 12y ago
  Wars would be a lot better if guys would say to themselves sometimes "Jesus, I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." -Kurt Vonnegut
  - paulhauggis 12y ago
    The problem is that in some wars, if you don't, the enemy will strike you just as hard or harder.
    - 12y ago
lmg643 12y ago
Kind of a link-bait headline from the New Yorker. "There were glaring weaknesses in America's nuclear security during the cold war, some of which were used as the basis for the movie." True. " Almost everything ... uh ... first thing that came to mind is whether a nuke was dropped with a soldier riding it like a horse. No? So what else... This topic was covered earlier and in a more comprehensive manner by Wired IIRC.
- dang 12y ago
  I agree with you (though obviously a bunch of users don't). But comments on link-bait and misleading headlines are more helpful when they suggest a better headline, or how to fix it. e.g. Replace "true" with "based on fact"? We can try that.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Actually, there was at least one incident that is pretty similar (although not identical) to that scene: "The task was doomed from the start; later testimony indicated Kulka had no idea where to find the locking pin in the large and complicated bomb-release mechanism. After a tense 12 minutes searching for the pin, the bombardier decided, correctly, that it must be high up in the bomb bay and invisible because of the curvature of the bomb. A short man, he jumped to pull himself up to get a look at where he thought the locking pin should be. Unfortunately, he evidently chose the emergency bomb-release mechanism for his handhold. The weapon dropped from its shackle and rested momentarily on the closed bomb-bay doors with Captain Kulka splayed across it in the manner of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. Kulka grabbed at a bag that had providentially been stored in the bomb bay, while the more-than-three-ton bomb broke open the bomb-bay doors and fell earthward. The bag Kulka was holding came loose, and he found himself sliding after the bomb without his parachute. He managed to grab something-he wasn't sure what-and haul himself to safety. Moments later the plane was rocked by the shock wave of the blast when the bomb hit the ground." http://io9.com/5904633/in-1958-america-accidentally-dropped-a-nuclear-weapon-on-two-little-girls-playhouse http://io9.com/5904633/in-1958-america-accidentally-dropped-... NB Of course, only the chemical explosives in the bomb exploded.
acdha 12y ago
Both my wife and I somehow managed to avoid seeing Dr. Strangelove before this summer. While watching it, I was repeatedly struck by the same realization as in the article: for all the reputation as a wild farce, there was a rather disturbingly small gap between the film and history which has subsequently been publicly released – and Dr. Strangelove came out decades before we reached the point of having an astrologist in the loop for international decisions. The far more serious story of Stanislav Petrov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov) has received a fair of coverage but is still somewhat under-appreciated; it's now my default cautionary response anytime you read a novel or watch a movie and say “oh, that'd never happen in real life”.
- techrat 12y ago
  Another film manages to do this and was nearly written off by the screenwriter for being too "Strangelovian" at times. Network. Highly prescient film. Both Network and Strangelove are mandatory watches, IMHO.
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    This can't be upvoted enough, Network is just outstanding.
    - pmoriarty 12y ago
      Thirded. However, Network is more of an economic conspiracy movie and less of a military conspiracy one, and it's got nothing to do with nuclear weapons or war.
- haukur 12y ago
  > we reached the point of having an astrologist in the loop for international decisions. I'm a little bit curious, did you mean to say astronomer or does the US government have an astrologist advisor?
  - arethuza 12y ago
arethuza 12y ago
What about General Power who, while head of SAC, said: Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power
cpursley 12y ago
I toured Stalin's secret bunker this summer in Moscow where USSR'S top generals held up during the entire Cuban Missile Crisis. This bunker was the control center for the Soviet's nuclear arsenal at the time. According to the guide, the top leaders debated back and forth whether to preemptively strike the United States. The entire thing was surreal - complete with a freighting nuclear attack simulation (America strikes first, of course) that included clips from Dr. Strangelove, genuine nuclear launch terminals and original bunker sirens going off. It was emotionally heavy realizing how close the end actually was. If you're ever in Moscow, go take the Bunker42 tour: http://www.bunker42.com/index.php?lang=en http://www.bunker42.com/index.php?lang=en
- arethuza 12y ago
  "the top leaders debated back and forth whether to preemptively strike the United States" At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis the strategic balance between the US and the Soviets was very one sided - the US had the capability to completely destroy the Soviet Union whereas the Soviets only had a very small number of functioning strategic weapons systems. However, the Soviets could have done an incredible amount of damage to Western Europe with medium range missiles.
  - pmoriarty 12y ago
    "Fifty years ago, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. During the standoff, US President John F. Kennedy thought the chance of escalation to war was "between 1 in 3 and even," and what we have learned in later decades has done nothing to lengthen those odds. We now know, for example, that in addition to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow. The US air strike and invasion that were scheduled for the third week of the confrontation would likely have triggered a nuclear response against American ships and troops, and perhaps even Miami. The resulting war might have led to the deaths of 100 million Americans and over 100 million Russians." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Post-crisis_revelations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Post-cris...
michaelt 12y ago
There's a fascinating chapter in 'the strategy of conflict' by Thomas Schelling [1] about accidental nuclear war. The theory is once both sides had nuclear submarines, any first launch would trigger mutually assured destruction - so no rational actor would ever launch first. And because of that, any threat to launch /intentionally/ sounds like a bluff. So if you want to threaten your enemy (for example, to make them withdraw some missiles from Cuba) you use a randomized threat - the increased probability of accidental war - which you can demonstrate with lots of near misses. Just look at a list of nuclear near misses [2] once you know that and you can see the message being sent to the Russians: Missiles in cuba = Defcon 3 = High chance of accidental launch = Not in your interests. In other words, the capacity for accidental launches is a feature, not a bug. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_of_Conflict_.281960.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_... [2] http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issu...
- digi_owl 12y ago
  And then you had a certain incident after the fall of the wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
cmsmith 12y ago
For those who are still interested after reading the article the information is taken from the author's book [1], which I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed/was terrified by. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788/ http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...
tlubinski 12y ago
John Oliver: Nuclear Weapons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g
mstade 12y ago
I read Rosenbaum's "How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III"[1] and it contains a number of pretty sobering details of just how crazy the cold war was, and how not much has truly improved since. The Soviet's perimeter system gets a mention, along with a story of how supposedly it set of a chain of events that very nearly did cause the launch of Soviet nukes, had it not been for a Soviet commander questioning whether the data received by the system was in fact accurate. As well, no mention of Dr. Strangelove, the cold war, or just nukes in general should go without also mentioning Major Harold Hering[2] who was discharged from the for asking: > How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president? Indeed. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/How-End-Begins-Nuclear-World/dp/1416594221/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415467653&sr=1-1&keywords=how+the+end+begins http://www.amazon.com/How-End-Begins-Nuclear-World/dp/141659... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hering
filereaper 12y ago
The character Dr. Strangelove is itself worth an entire movie, he was supposed to be the combination of the following: - Edward Teller (Father of Hydrogen Bomb "the super") - John von Neumann (legendary mathematician and computer scientist) - Werner von Braun (designer of V2, and later on Saturn V5 for NASA) the 1900's to 1960's was an amazing time to be in a STEM field, hell being a Physicist was so freaking cool. Now everything's about Finance and Wall Street...
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  My Dad worked with Edward Teller, and Teller was often at our house while I was growing up. The Peter Sellers character was totally different than Teller in real life. Teller was a refined gentleman. Peter Seller's character was funny, and not at all like Teller. BTW, I think that we are fortunate to have all survived the cold war!
  - arethuza 12y ago
    The book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" doesn't present Teller in a particularly favorable light - he is presented as being very political, scheming and rather two faced (i.e. being perfectly civilized directly to Oppenheimer while working closely with those people who undermine Oppenheimer). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Prometheus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Prometheus
    - pmoriarty 12y ago
      "Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for investigating non-military uses of nuclear explosives, which the United States explored under Operation Plowshare. One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for shipment of resources from coal and oil fields through Point Hope, Alaska... A related experiment which also had Teller's endorsement was a plan to extract oil from the tar sands in northern Alberta with nuclear explosions, titled Project Oilsands."[1] Truth is stranger than fiction. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller
cperciva 12y ago
“This is absolute madness, Ambassador,” President Merkin Muffley says in the film, after being told about the Soviets’ automated retaliatory system. “Why should you build such a thing?” In the case of the Russian "Dead Hand", one of the stated purposes was to reduce the potential for nuclear war, by allowing the command-and-control structure to delay the decision about retaliation until it is clear that a possible attack is, in fact, a real attack. If you think "I have 30 seconds to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike", you're far more likely to make a bad decision than if you think "I don't need to do anything, because if the blips on our radar are ICBMs then a retaliatory strike will happen after I'm dead".
- Ygg2 12y ago
  It's missing the point somewhat. Dead Hand is Russia's nuclear deterrent against Russia. It would make no sense to broadcast it's existence to US. Why would Russia need deterrent against Russia? Some people in charge were wary of America and wanted a preemptive nuclear attack, to thwart chance of total nuclear annihilation. Dead Hand in theory allows Russia to deliver a Strike from beyond, thereby removing need for premature nuclear annihilation.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    The other thing to consider that the same capability probably exists in the US for the same purpose. Otherwise, those flocks of geese on the DEW line and similar screw-ups would have brought on nuclear annihilation.
pmoriarty 12y ago
Anyone who enjoyed Dr. Strangelove would probably enjoy a much lesser known film along the same lines: Seven Days in May.[1] It doesn't have Peter Seller's brilliant acting, and it wasn't directed by Kubrick, and it's not a comedy.. but many of the themes are quite similar and both were released within days of each other, in Jan and Feb of 1964, a little over a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis.[2] According to Wikipedia, "President John F. Kennedy had read the novel and believed the scenario as described could actually occur in the United States."[3] [1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058576/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058576/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
pflanze 12y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345
thehistorian 12y ago
The author completely missed a major point of the movie (along with the people in this thread), that it was the United States military who was pursuing research on a 'doomsday device' (computerized nuclear armageddon). The S.A.G.E radar defense system, adjusting for inflation, is the most expensive computer system ever assembled. The Q-32 was the crown jewel of the whole operation and it would also later become the first node in the network that today is referred to as the internet. SDC is responsible for the firsts computer implementations of relational database (KWIC), semantic networks, the first WAN & time-sharing device(Sage & Q-32) and the first complete speech recognition system (Synthex). They also trained 22,000 of the first 25,000 programmers in the United States. The term hacker was actually coined by business and military personnel to describe the decline in professional programming standards that occurred with creation of computer science department in the 60's and the unskilled students they produced who didn't properly document their code. Little computer history for all you.
- rattray 12y ago
  ... Really? Can anyone else corroborate any of this? Or cite sources. Certainly interesting stuff if true.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    Worth noting that even with system like SAGE in place "The bomber will always get through" was probably fairly accurate - in a secret exercise in the early 1960s a small number of UK strategic bombers managed to "bomb" New York, Washington and Chicago even though the entire air defence system was looking for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield
pluma 12y ago
As a German born in 1985 I find the US far scarier in retrospect than the Soviet Union. For the Soviets, as for Europeans, it was very obvious that a nuclear war would in any case result in massive numbers of deaths locally. Even if they magically weren't hit, attacking Europe would have lethal consequences. A lot of the historical "near misses" involved carelessness by the US or the US-led NATO. Plus the general attitude towards atomic technologies was far more unquestioningly positive in the US than in Europe.

375 points by ux-app 12y ago

This is also true for Enemy of the State. Watch it again. Your jaw will hit the floor: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

swartkrans 12y ago
> This is also true for Enemy of the State. Uh, no? None of what happened in the movie is based on a real story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)#Real_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)#Real...
- coldtea 12y ago
  Who said anything about "based on a real story"? Did you read TFA? Dr. Strangelove's plot is not based on a real story either. It's about getting the details right, not about being based on any particular real life story or persons.
rickdale 12y ago
You are right. I just watched it the other night and I was blown away by the accuracy at which the movie portrayed surveillance and even wondered if that movie was giving out more information than what the government wants out nowadays compared to back then. We were more skeptical that these things existed back then, but now that we know they do it makes that movie dead on.
- tripzilch 12y ago
  I remember watching this film, just a few years after it came out and thinking, "All of this is technically possible ... but they probably wouldn't go that far, or have the infrastructure in place". Now I know better. I was indeed recently pondering I should watch it again, just to see what my reaction would be.
  - kybernetyk 12y ago
    Heh, I watched it when it came out and thought it was mostly the typical hollywood computer sci-fi they put into computer films to make it more exciting for the average viewer. Sadly I was wrong.
- drawkbox 12y ago
  It is strange how in the US we really do get many of our issues out in film, both propaganda and progression. Movies are great and let people experience an issue through a story. Movies are America's original pressure release valve to deal with issues and dream, could be one of our secrets to success over time. The internet is also one of those releases, the whole world needed it. Books weren't used or pop enough to really be the cultural tracking. Movies really do tell our history. Enemy of the State also had lots of starting actors, yes Jack Black was a NSA agent linking your transactions, Jamie Kennedy, Seth Green also agents.
JetSpiegel 12y ago
Enemy of the State is a still a Michael Bay film though. A bit restrained, but still a bit too explosion-ey.
- robterrell 12y ago
  Nope. Tony Scott. But, I get what you mean. Still, it's got this thin film of political intrigue / thriller across the top that really holds the plot together. Bay would have skimmed that right off. Also, I'm not a fan of Tony Scott at all, but boy can cast the hell out of a movie. He's got great actors in every tiny role.
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    Sorry, they all looks the same to me. Those directors, I mean. Bay did The Island, and it suffers from the same thing, it could have been awesome with other director.
- kchoudhu 12y ago
  It's based on The Conversation (or vaguely related to it?). I remember being mildly entertained when Gene Hackman turned up partway through the movie.
  - JetSpiegel 12y ago
    Hmm, that film was on my watchlist, I'll take a look.
jeangenie 12y ago
I'll have to rewatch. My family and I were also discussing this same idea in relation to Minority Report. Are these instances of life imitating art?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Minority Report is (good) SF, remote precognition seems far-fetched at best (hence the 'F' in SF). Enemy of the State is more of a 'could happen' scenario, it contains no technology that wasn't present when the movie was made afaik.
- lukifer 12y ago
  We're not to Minority Report yet, but we're laying the groundwork: collecting massive data-sets that will someday be used for Bayesian predictive algorithms to determine pre-crime. While the current population would vehemently reject such a scheme, it's quite feasible that public perception will shift after a particularly shocking crime/terrorism incident which "could have been prevented".
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
I also recommend watching Coppola's 1974 film The Conversation, which was a heavy influence for Enemy of the State: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/ The technology presented is obsolete, but the film is far more haunting because it's a deeply psychological experience.

EvanAnderson 12y ago

If this article piqued your interest definitely have a look at "The Dead Hand" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307387844 http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous/dp/0307...).

dmpk2k 12y ago
"The Dead Hand" combined with "Command and Control" (http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788/ http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...) makes for very sobering reading. Put the two together, and it's a genuine miracle that nothing bad happened. Of course, we're not out of the woods... Both are excellent books, BTW, so I agree with the parent poster's recommendation.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Also "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - which is pretty alarming even when we know how it all worked out: http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev/dp/1400078911 http://www.amazon.com/One-Minute-Midnight-Kennedy-Khrushchev...

coldtea 12y ago

That all those official denials and assurances at the time were BS and lies, serves as a good reminder for how to treat similar assurances in the present.

cstross 12y ago

Young folks today just don't believe how downright surreal (and scary) the cold war was to live through. Look, just read this wikipedia entry about the British Blue Peacock nuclear device, and boggle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock Yes. It's a chicken-heated atomic landmine. Not a joke: it was a Real Thing. And so was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device... The M-29 Davy Crockett tactical nuclear recoilless rifle. (Jeep-mounted, no PALs, the rocket's flight range was less than its lethal radius of effect: the crew were supposed to fire it over a hill then dive under their jeep for cover.) People not only imagined these things, they built them and deployed them in the stone-cold expectation of using them in anger.

pcrh 12y ago
That reminds me of the pigeon-guided missile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
- mpweiher 12y ago
  I see your pigeon and raise you a bat. As in bat-shit-crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb When they tested them, the bats incinerated an Air Force base.
simonsarris 12y ago
Wars would be a lot better if guys would say to themselves sometimes "Jesus, I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." -Kurt Vonnegut
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  The problem is that in some wars, if you don't, the enemy will strike you just as hard or harder.
  - 12y ago

lmg643 12y ago

Kind of a link-bait headline from the New Yorker. "There were glaring weaknesses in America's nuclear security during the cold war, some of which were used as the basis for the movie." True. " Almost everything ... uh ... first thing that came to mind is whether a nuke was dropped with a soldier riding it like a horse. No? So what else... This topic was covered earlier and in a more comprehensive manner by Wired IIRC.

dang 12y ago
I agree with you (though obviously a bunch of users don't). But comments on link-bait and misleading headlines are more helpful when they suggest a better headline, or how to fix it. e.g. Replace "true" with "based on fact"? We can try that.
arethuza 12y ago
Actually, there was at least one incident that is pretty similar (although not identical) to that scene: "The task was doomed from the start; later testimony indicated Kulka had no idea where to find the locking pin in the large and complicated bomb-release mechanism. After a tense 12 minutes searching for the pin, the bombardier decided, correctly, that it must be high up in the bomb bay and invisible because of the curvature of the bomb. A short man, he jumped to pull himself up to get a look at where he thought the locking pin should be. Unfortunately, he evidently chose the emergency bomb-release mechanism for his handhold. The weapon dropped from its shackle and rested momentarily on the closed bomb-bay doors with Captain Kulka splayed across it in the manner of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. Kulka grabbed at a bag that had providentially been stored in the bomb bay, while the more-than-three-ton bomb broke open the bomb-bay doors and fell earthward. The bag Kulka was holding came loose, and he found himself sliding after the bomb without his parachute. He managed to grab something-he wasn't sure what-and haul himself to safety. Moments later the plane was rocked by the shock wave of the blast when the bomb hit the ground." http://io9.com/5904633/in-1958-america-accidentally-dropped-a-nuclear-weapon-on-two-little-girls-playhouse http://io9.com/5904633/in-1958-america-accidentally-dropped-... NB Of course, only the chemical explosives in the bomb exploded.

acdha 12y ago

Both my wife and I somehow managed to avoid seeing Dr. Strangelove before this summer. While watching it, I was repeatedly struck by the same realization as in the article: for all the reputation as a wild farce, there was a rather disturbingly small gap between the film and history which has subsequently been publicly released – and Dr. Strangelove came out decades before we reached the point of having an astrologist in the loop for international decisions. The far more serious story of Stanislav Petrov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov) has received a fair of coverage but is still somewhat under-appreciated; it's now my default cautionary response anytime you read a novel or watch a movie and say “oh, that'd never happen in real life”.

techrat 12y ago
Another film manages to do this and was nearly written off by the screenwriter for being too "Strangelovian" at times. Network. Highly prescient film. Both Network and Strangelove are mandatory watches, IMHO.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  This can't be upvoted enough, Network is just outstanding.
  - pmoriarty 12y ago
    Thirded. However, Network is more of an economic conspiracy movie and less of a military conspiracy one, and it's got nothing to do with nuclear weapons or war.
haukur 12y ago
> we reached the point of having an astrologist in the loop for international decisions. I'm a little bit curious, did you mean to say astronomer or does the US government have an astrologist advisor?
- arethuza 12y ago

arethuza 12y ago

What about General Power who, while head of SAC, said: Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power

cpursley 12y ago

I toured Stalin's secret bunker this summer in Moscow where USSR'S top generals held up during the entire Cuban Missile Crisis. This bunker was the control center for the Soviet's nuclear arsenal at the time. According to the guide, the top leaders debated back and forth whether to preemptively strike the United States. The entire thing was surreal - complete with a freighting nuclear attack simulation (America strikes first, of course) that included clips from Dr. Strangelove, genuine nuclear launch terminals and original bunker sirens going off. It was emotionally heavy realizing how close the end actually was. If you're ever in Moscow, go take the Bunker42 tour: http://www.bunker42.com/index.php?lang=en http://www.bunker42.com/index.php?lang=en

arethuza 12y ago
"the top leaders debated back and forth whether to preemptively strike the United States" At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis the strategic balance between the US and the Soviets was very one sided - the US had the capability to completely destroy the Soviet Union whereas the Soviets only had a very small number of functioning strategic weapons systems. However, the Soviets could have done an incredible amount of damage to Western Europe with medium range missiles.
- pmoriarty 12y ago
  "Fifty years ago, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. During the standoff, US President John F. Kennedy thought the chance of escalation to war was "between 1 in 3 and even," and what we have learned in later decades has done nothing to lengthen those odds. We now know, for example, that in addition to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow. The US air strike and invasion that were scheduled for the third week of the confrontation would likely have triggered a nuclear response against American ships and troops, and perhaps even Miami. The resulting war might have led to the deaths of 100 million Americans and over 100 million Russians." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Post-crisis_revelations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis#Post-cris...

michaelt 12y ago

There's a fascinating chapter in 'the strategy of conflict' by Thomas Schelling [1] about accidental nuclear war. The theory is once both sides had nuclear submarines, any first launch would trigger mutually assured destruction - so no rational actor would ever launch first. And because of that, any threat to launch /intentionally/ sounds like a bluff. So if you want to threaten your enemy (for example, to make them withdraw some missiles from Cuba) you use a randomized threat - the increased probability of accidental war - which you can demonstrate with lots of near misses. Just look at a list of nuclear near misses [2] once you know that and you can see the message being sent to the Russians: Missiles in cuba = Defcon 3 = High chance of accidental launch = Not in your interests. In other words, the capacity for accidental launches is a feature, not a bug. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_of_Conflict_.281960.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_... [2] http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issu...

digi_owl 12y ago
And then you had a certain incident after the fall of the wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident

cmsmith 12y ago

For those who are still interested after reading the article the information is taken from the author's book [1], which I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed/was terrified by. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illusion/dp/0143125788/ http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...

tlubinski 12y ago

John Oliver: Nuclear Weapons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g

mstade 12y ago

I read Rosenbaum's "How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III"[1] and it contains a number of pretty sobering details of just how crazy the cold war was, and how not much has truly improved since. The Soviet's perimeter system gets a mention, along with a story of how supposedly it set of a chain of events that very nearly did cause the launch of Soviet nukes, had it not been for a Soviet commander questioning whether the data received by the system was in fact accurate. As well, no mention of Dr. Strangelove, the cold war, or just nukes in general should go without also mentioning Major Harold Hering[2] who was discharged from the for asking: > How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president? Indeed. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/How-End-Begins-Nuclear-World/dp/1416594221/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415467653&sr=1-1&keywords=how+the+end+begins http://www.amazon.com/How-End-Begins-Nuclear-World/dp/141659... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Hering

filereaper 12y ago

The character Dr. Strangelove is itself worth an entire movie, he was supposed to be the combination of the following: - Edward Teller (Father of Hydrogen Bomb "the super") - John von Neumann (legendary mathematician and computer scientist) - Werner von Braun (designer of V2, and later on Saturn V5 for NASA) the 1900's to 1960's was an amazing time to be in a STEM field, hell being a Physicist was so freaking cool. Now everything's about Finance and Wall Street...

mark_l_watson 12y ago
My Dad worked with Edward Teller, and Teller was often at our house while I was growing up. The Peter Sellers character was totally different than Teller in real life. Teller was a refined gentleman. Peter Seller's character was funny, and not at all like Teller. BTW, I think that we are fortunate to have all survived the cold war!
- arethuza 12y ago
  The book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" doesn't present Teller in a particularly favorable light - he is presented as being very political, scheming and rather two faced (i.e. being perfectly civilized directly to Oppenheimer while working closely with those people who undermine Oppenheimer). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Prometheus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Prometheus
  - pmoriarty 12y ago
    "Teller was one of the strongest and best-known advocates for investigating non-military uses of nuclear explosives, which the United States explored under Operation Plowshare. One of the most controversial projects he proposed was a plan to use a multi-megaton hydrogen bomb to dig a deep-water harbor more than a mile long and half a mile wide to use for shipment of resources from coal and oil fields through Point Hope, Alaska... A related experiment which also had Teller's endorsement was a plan to extract oil from the tar sands in northern Alberta with nuclear explosions, titled Project Oilsands."[1] Truth is stranger than fiction. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller

cperciva 12y ago

“This is absolute madness, Ambassador,” President Merkin Muffley says in the film, after being told about the Soviets’ automated retaliatory system. “Why should you build such a thing?” In the case of the Russian "Dead Hand", one of the stated purposes was to reduce the potential for nuclear war, by allowing the command-and-control structure to delay the decision about retaliation until it is clear that a possible attack is, in fact, a real attack. If you think "I have 30 seconds to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike", you're far more likely to make a bad decision than if you think "I don't need to do anything, because if the blips on our radar are ICBMs then a retaliatory strike will happen after I'm dead".

Ygg2 12y ago
It's missing the point somewhat. Dead Hand is Russia's nuclear deterrent against Russia. It would make no sense to broadcast it's existence to US. Why would Russia need deterrent against Russia? Some people in charge were wary of America and wanted a preemptive nuclear attack, to thwart chance of total nuclear annihilation. Dead Hand in theory allows Russia to deliver a Strike from beyond, thereby removing need for premature nuclear annihilation.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  The other thing to consider that the same capability probably exists in the US for the same purpose. Otherwise, those flocks of geese on the DEW line and similar screw-ups would have brought on nuclear annihilation.

pmoriarty 12y ago

Anyone who enjoyed Dr. Strangelove would probably enjoy a much lesser known film along the same lines: Seven Days in May.[1] It doesn't have Peter Seller's brilliant acting, and it wasn't directed by Kubrick, and it's not a comedy.. but many of the themes are quite similar and both were released within days of each other, in Jan and Feb of 1964, a little over a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis.[2] According to Wikipedia, "President John F. Kennedy had read the novel and believed the scenario as described could actually occur in the United States."[3] [1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058576/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058576/ [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May

pflanze 12y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7109345

thehistorian 12y ago

The author completely missed a major point of the movie (along with the people in this thread), that it was the United States military who was pursuing research on a 'doomsday device' (computerized nuclear armageddon). The S.A.G.E radar defense system, adjusting for inflation, is the most expensive computer system ever assembled. The Q-32 was the crown jewel of the whole operation and it would also later become the first node in the network that today is referred to as the internet. SDC is responsible for the firsts computer implementations of relational database (KWIC), semantic networks, the first WAN & time-sharing device(Sage & Q-32) and the first complete speech recognition system (Synthex). They also trained 22,000 of the first 25,000 programmers in the United States. The term hacker was actually coined by business and military personnel to describe the decline in professional programming standards that occurred with creation of computer science department in the 60's and the unskilled students they produced who didn't properly document their code. Little computer history for all you.

rattray 12y ago
... Really? Can anyone else corroborate any of this? Or cite sources. Certainly interesting stuff if true.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Worth noting that even with system like SAGE in place "The bomber will always get through" was probably fairly accurate - in a secret exercise in the early 1960s a small number of UK strategic bombers managed to "bomb" New York, Washington and Chicago even though the entire air defence system was looking for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Skyshield

pluma 12y ago

As a German born in 1985 I find the US far scarier in retrospect than the Soviet Union. For the Soviets, as for Europeans, it was very obvious that a nuclear war would in any case result in massive numbers of deaths locally. Even if they magically weren't hit, attacking Europe would have lethal consequences. A lot of the historical "near misses" involved carelessness by the US or the US-led NATO. Plus the general attitude towards atomic technologies was far more unquestioningly positive in the US than in Europe.