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

Post by arethuza » Sat, Nov 08, 2014, 11:10 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #91

arethuza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

"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 tactica…

Post by IkmoIkmo » Sat, Nov 08, 2014, 11:14 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #30

HillRat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father commanded a heavy weapons company on the Fulda Gap that included M-29s. Despite the fact that the Davy Crockett was very patently a suicide machine, the military did not explain to its soldiers that the warheads' radius of effect was larger than the gun's maximum range. However, since the gun operators were chosen from the most academically-accomplished of the enlisted ranks[1], they figured it out pretty f…

It seems a little troubling that the Turkish military was supposed to be the pivotal factor in World War III. Was there any particular reason for that, other than Turkey being right next to Russia and the Crimea? What if the Soviets went after Turkey first?

Post by arethuza » Sat, Nov 08, 2014, 11:29 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #98

arethuza wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately the political leaders on both sides knew that they could never use nuclear weapons. Reagan was horrified and changed his policies, much to his credit, when he realised that the Soviets really were terrified of an attack from the West. Even Khrushchev, who had a lot of blood on his hands, couldn't sleep for days after he had been briefed on what a nuclear war would actually mean - he only calmed down once…

You're missing a 'probably' in there somewhere.

Post by lukifer » Sun, Nov 09, 2014, 12:09 AM UTC

jeangenie wrote: post #43

geichel wrote: post #2

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

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?

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 09, 2014, 1:34 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #100

cstross wrote: post #8

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…

The Davy Crockett is one of the most scary devices ever made. You could smuggle that thing into just about anywhere with relatively little chance of detection. I assume they kept good track of where those ended up, that's as close to a suitcase nuke as there ever existed (as far as I know). That's a proliferation nightmare and the only good thing about it is probably that it's very hard to make a small nuke work reli…