Good episode. A couple comments-

-Strangelove is based in good part on Edward Teller <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller>

-The closest we ever came to a nuclear war was an event most haven't heard of, Able Archer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_archer> In a nutshell, the Russians actually thought a series of NATO maneuvers (in which we simulated going to DEFCON 1) was leading to a real attack, and put everything on high alert and got ready to pre-emptivly  launch a strike. Once word leaked out to the West, the military was stunned. We had no idea the USSR was seriously afraid WE were the aggressors and wanted to strike first against them, and this was informing most of their actions. You can probably draw a straight line from this event to the gradual backing down of both sides.

Last edited by Invid (2010-07-26 16:46:23)

I had a history prof in college — pre-flunk-out — who used to say that the closest we ever came to nuclear war was the Ussuri River incident in 69.

The Ussuri River lies on the border between China and what was then the USSR, and the exact border had been a matter of dispute for ages. There was this shitty little mud island in the middle of the river, and in 1969 some Chinese soldiers attacked some Soviet troops there. A couple dozen guys were killed. In response, the Soviets bombed Chinese installations on the other side of the river and invaded the island. Then the Chinese bombed and invaded back, and so on, and so on.

It got so bad that Brezhnev got Nixon on the phone and asked him what the US would do if the USSR launched a full-scale nuclear attack against China. He had the Tu-95s on the runways with the props spinning. Nixon deliberated over it hard before finally saying no, that if the USSR attacked China, the US would have no choice but to attack the USSR.

Brezhnev stood down the bombers and a few months later settled the dispute with China.

If Nixon had said one word differently, at the very least it would've been nuclear war in Asia, and god knows what else after that.

I don't wanna sound all snotty, but Trey's right. The Cold War was a different time. And at the risk of sounding condescending when I don't mean to, I really do legitimately wonder whether people who were born after, or who were born very late in it, can imagine what it was like. I'm not being all oh-you-punk-kids-don't-know about it. I mean it literally. I wonder if it's even possible to imagine what it was like for somebody who didn't live through it.

Ask Brian, he mentioned it on Apollo 13, saying that they lit the charges after the ship had broken up to be sure no huge pieces destroyed neighborhoods in Texas on the fall back down.

Also, welcome to the forum Keith!

Ah, yes, I had forgotten about that. Led directly to China starting ping pong diplomacy (losing a ping pong tournament to get the US's attention) and eventually Nixon going to China.

Given all the US forces in Vietnam which borders China (well, North Vietnam does) there'd be no way to stay out of it, or guarantee China in fact was the main objective.

Like much of history, actions during the Cold War only make sense if you're able to take the entire context of the times into account. Which brings to mind a recent posting about how Hollywood is horrible a doing war fiction, particularly the series on the History Channel called "World War II":

"So they invent a completely implausible superweapon that they've never mentioned until now. Apparently the Americans got some scientists together to invent it, only we never heard anything about it because it was "classified". In two years, the scientists manage to invent a weapon a thousand times more powerful than anything anyone's ever seen before - drawing from, of course, ancient mystical texts. Then they use the superweapon, blow up several Japanese cities easily, and the Japanese surrender. Convenient, isn't it?

...and then, in the entire rest of the show, over five or six different big wars, they never use the superweapon again. Seriously. They have this whole thing about a war in Vietnam that lasts decades and kills tens of thousands of people, and they never wonder if maybe they should consider using the frickin' unstoppable mystical superweapon that they won the last war with. At this point, you're starting to wonder if any of the show's writers have even watched the episodes the other writers made."

<http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html>

I would be really obliged if you'd write down what it says for the eleven steps, or at least summarize. That sounds interesting.

This. There are remote charges on the shuttles, as with all rockets. Each rocket flies within a predetermined column of space. If it flies outside of that space for whatever (catastrophic) reason, it's the Range Safety Officer's (RSO's) responsibility to activate the charges to prevent the rocket from crashing into a populated area.

If you watch the footage of Challenger exploding, you can see that after the External Tank disintegrates, the SRBs (the white rockets on either side) continue on, still active. You can't really tell from the footage on Youtube, but at some point after that, the RSO detonated them.

It was an interesting mindset to have, even near the end (I graduated high school in '87). You figured it was just going to happen at some point, and kind of hoped it was limited in some respect, but given there was nothing you could do about it you tended to think about it more abstractly.

But, given we did think about it, it's harder to take shows like Jericho seriously

A fascinating book my dad had on the shelf (next to the chess, Tom Swift, and Hornblower books) was The Third World War: August 1985 by Sir John Hackett. Written in 1978, it tried to give a realistic reason for and waging of World War III. The war starts out conventionally and only a couple nukes are used, so it's an optimistic tale trying to say the West should continue the conventional arms build up started by Carter as we CAN win that way. He did a 1982 rewrite called The Untold Story to account for all the changes in the last couple years (for example, he had Carter serving two terms and the war starting because the Soviets wanted to test the new untried Republican President)

I think the commentaries on the movie you don't like to be  stronger, I get more points of view and why film mechanics don't work. On good films there's long pauses as your clearly enjoying it or just praise. To be honest i think in terms of understanding film bad films almost seem better for finding better methods then the good in general.

Going to go on a limb here, but there were lots of positives about the cold war we don't think about. I think some of that is the reason for the weird nostalgia that been happening lately, from the almost happy news shrilling of the spy's that were caught to movies like [in]"SALT".
It seems that people over look the sense of stability and purpose that the cold war gave. There were other funny side effect like third world nations could play one off the other for aid etc.  Once the cold war ended aid ended, or became something the IMF used to convert economy's. And the sense that if you started it all life was over, so why bother? It was those narrow events like the Cuban missile crisis etc that made it harrowing but over all was a fairly locked period of history at the macro level. I remember having really bad nuclear war night mares after seeing "Threads" and "Day After" but it seems far more unstable today, with so many players and agendas all in conflict that its become a scary noise.
And i find it stranger that the nation you wanted to nuke and thus start a final human war with now makes your Ipods.
OOh If your continuing this cold war theme you have to do "Red Dawn", one of the silliest guilty pleasures you will ever see.
"WOLVERINES!!!!"

Last edited by Deamon (2010-07-30 20:15:46)

I think the remarkable thing about nuclear weapons is that in sixty-five years, they've only been used in anger once. Okay, technically two times, but those were only three days apart in an era when it could take days for news to get from one side of the planet to another. So I'm counting those as one.

Anyway, my point is, for more than half a century nuclear bombs and warheads have been all over the damn place, and they've never been used in anger since. That kind of amazes me.

If by "made" you mean "assembled," then all iPods are made in China. But the parts that go into them are made by a bunch of different manufacturers, in a bunch of different countries. Welcome to the 21st century economy.

you mean how like 90 percent of a Boeing is made out side the US and you just put the pieces together?
most of the components are made in china as well except for a major part which accounts for a full third of the production cost which is made in japan.
Doesn't change the point that their made in a country that was your ideological enemy to the extreme that the US and its allies were prepared to kill ever living person on the earth to stop now makes a disproportionate amount of the tech we base our life on. And whats sadder is the way that same tech is marketed, are you a rebel living fancy free with a slew of music you didn't pay for on a device made by small Asian women?
Our laptops and funky toys are made by a totalitarian country that was the target of half the west's nuclear arsenal now makes part for those same weapons systems.