11–20 of 164 posts
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.
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 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... The M-29 Davy Crock…
-Kurt Vonnegut
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 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... The M-29 Davy Crock…
This is also true for Enemy of the State. Watch it again. Your jaw will hit the floor: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/
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 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... The M-29 Davy Crock…
Reminds me of an old RPG called Paranoia, which featured nuclear hand grenade bombs. I never realised that weapons similar to that joke actually existed!
The far more serious story of 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”.
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 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... The M-29 Davy Crock…
As my father pointed out, the concerns were really academic; if the Soviets did invade Western Europe, US war plans in the 1950s and 1960s involved so liberal a use of tactical and operational nuclear weapons that you wouldn't be safe anywhere between Bonn and Berlin. Victory measured out in teaspoons and kilotons.
[1] As opposed to his heavy mortar platoons, one of whom managed to nearly drop a round on the command tent during an exercise after a private failed to understand the operation of a compass. At least, that was his excuse....
Addendum: I should point out that pretty much every warplan the US came up with in the 1950s was a variation on "use nucs to slow down the Soviets until the Turkish military can mobilize." It wasn't until the professionalization of Western European forces, public hostility towards turning Europe into a smoking crater, and the use of game theory to describe how mobilization could become nuclear escalation that nuclear weapons as a standard battlefield play went away.
However, the Soviets never took the operational and tactical use of nuclear weapons out of their play book; Soviet blitz doctrine in the late 1980s still envisioned using widespread nuclear attacks to soften up NATO forces or deny ground in the face of NATO attacks.
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 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... The M-29 Davy Crock…
People actually paid significant parts of their yearly salary to build, stock and maintain nuclear bomb shelters in their backyards...in places like Ohio.
Something like this [1] was just seen as mildly eccentric, not something that would get you institutionalized with severe paranoia.
1 - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-1970s-undergro...
People, large numbers of them, actually believed (and it may have been true) that extinction-level global war was an accidental launch away.
What's even more interesting is the long-term vestiges of these ideas have hung around, but without nuclear war being on the horizon they've morphed and latched onto other scenarios: a Republican-Democrat civil war, the Rapture, Zombie invasion, Disease outbreak, etc. These aren't just old shelters, these are brand new.
http://alpinesurvival.com/survival-shelters-for-sale.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/archi...
Though, I'm always struck with how everybody wants to outfit their end-of-the-world bunkers with modern living room entertainment centers complete with cable TV, wi-fi and comfortable home-office.
In any other scenario, somebody who spends millions of dollars to build 7,500 sq ft of underground EMP shielded comfortable living area with hidden and barricaded entrance, independent filtered air and water and multiple years of emergency food [2] would be dragged into emergency psychiatric care.
But instead these scenarios are talked about openly on major news networks, reviewed in popular magazines, and I can buy these supplies commercial and off-the-shelf -- there's industries that exist to do nothing but feed this demand!
2 - http://www.costco.com/32,000-Total-Servings-4-Person-1-Year-...
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 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... The M-29 Davy Crock…
This is also true for Enemy of the State. Watch it again. Your jaw will hit the floor: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/
Enemy of the State is a still a Michael Bay film though. A bit restrained, but still a bit too explosion-ey.
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.