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

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

#131

Post by the_af »

a3n wrote: post #65
acqq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too long after Hiroshima some US decision makers actually proposed "pre-emptively" bombing the USSR with the nuclear bombs. Why? Well, the communists are dangerous, that's enough, better earlier than later(!) The idea was rejected with the apparent main argument that the US didn't have enough nuclear bombs to annihilate the whole USSR: too many soldiers would continue to fight! US eventually produced enough nucle…

John von Neumann, one of a handful of people most responsible for the existence of your job, proposed a pre-emptive strike. He needed fast digital computers to calculate bomb parameters and effects, so he helped invent them. http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1179883.ece quote: This unsettling scenario might be pre-empted by a more apocalyptic one: nuclear Armageddon. George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral [1] rev…

Von Neumann was a brilliant guy, and we owe him much about our profession... but I can't say I like him as a person. Or anyone who advocates preemptive nuclear bombing of a country "just in case", or because we don't like its government.

Come to think of it, I'd dislike anyone who advocates preemptive nuclear bombing of even the worst, most aggressive dictatorship in the world. There are people living in there, too.

I don't think survival at all costs, no matter what, is a worthy cause.

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

#132

Post by pluma »

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.

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

#133

Post by the_af »

filereaper wrote: post #62

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. N…

I agree Dr. Strangelove is a great character, but I don't know if my takeaway from this is that the 60s were "an amazing time to be in a STEM field". My takeaway would be "STEM in the 60s had some brilliant but also cruel, paranoid and just plain deranged individuals that nearly destroyed the world"...

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

#134

Post by waterlesscloud »

jstatus wrote: post #83
bane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up right at the tail-end of it, the 1984 Red Dawn was a perfectly reasonable scenario. Whenever I think the hysteria was completely insane I think back to my parents and grandparents and some of the truly bizarre notions that happened during their youth: duck and cover, public bomb shelter drills, etc. People actually paid significant parts of their yearly salary to build, stock and maintain nuclear bomb shelt…

Fun fact -- the shelters in Montana shown on alpinesurvival.com are from a new-age survivalist cult ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Universal_and_Triumphant... ). I know this because I grew up in it, and actually lived on the street shown in the photo. Everybody sunk their life savings into them and racked up the credit card debt in the late 80s. Yes, connected to the cold war, but for larger "karmic" reasons o…

One of my friends spent his teen years building those shelters. His mom was in the cult. Makes for a great story, in any case!

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

#135

Post by a3n »

the_af wrote: post #131
a3n wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John von Neumann, one of a handful of people most responsible for the existence of your job, proposed a pre-emptive strike. He needed fast digital computers to calculate bomb parameters and effects, so he helped invent them. http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1179883.ece quote: This unsettling scenario might be pre-empted by a more apocalyptic one: nuclear Armageddon. George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral [1] rev…

Von Neumann was a brilliant guy, and we owe him much about our profession... but I can't say I like him as a person. Or anyone who advocates preemptive nuclear bombing of a country "just in case", or because we don't like its government. Come to think of it, I'd dislike anyone who advocates preemptive nuclear bombing of even the worst, most aggressive dictatorship in the world. There are people living in there, too.…

Exactly. A survival at all costs mentality can create exactly those costs. A self-fulfilling curse.

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

#136

Post by judk »

cstross wrote: post #58
philwelch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That emergency food supply would feed a family of four for a year, that's not "multiple years" of emergency food if you actually have a family of four. If you have a family of six it won't even last one year. Emergency food supplies are also useful for things like earthquakes and other natural disasters where you might have to stay put for awhile but you won't be able to make it to the grocery store either. You might…

Or you might be doing it for religious reasons: https://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage?lang=eng (Devout Mormons are supposed to maintain a stockpile of food. I suspect Costco get much of their custom for this preparedness pack from members of the LDS ...)

Religious reasons are just insanity reasons proxies through family and friends.

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

#137

Post by tomohawk »

mikeash wrote: post #95
ams6110 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's keep in mind that people have actually not ony conceived but carried out heious atrocities including genocide with far more ordinary devices.

If the Cold War had gone hot, it would have surpassed all prior genocides, wars, and other atrocities since written history began, combined .

It was bad enough just the way it was, with 80 - 100 million people being killed by the communists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...

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

#138

Post by e12e »

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…

I think the scariest part is the insistence on using the past tense. As if the US (and it's antagonists) can't still destroy the world several times over.

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

sitkack wrote: post #119
jstatus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact -- the shelters in Montana shown on alpinesurvival.com are from a new-age survivalist cult ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Universal_and_Triumphant... ). I know this because I grew up in it, and actually lived on the street shown in the photo. Everybody sunk their life savings into them and racked up the credit card debt in the late 80s. Yes, connected to the cold war, but for larger "karmic" reasons o…

Just because it "turned out well" doesn't mean that they were wrong. It also doesn't mean they weren't crazy.

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by Dylan16807 »

arca_vorago wrote: post #89
jstatus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact -- the shelters in Montana shown on alpinesurvival.com are from a new-age survivalist cult ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Universal_and_Triumphant... ). I know this because I grew up in it, and actually lived on the street shown in the photo. Everybody sunk their life savings into them and racked up the credit card debt in the late 80s. Yes, connected to the cold war, but for larger "karmic" reasons o…

Was it really that crazy considering all the "we were about to press the button but didn't" stories that have surfaced about that era since? It was a very real possibility.

>Was it really that crazy

'it' being what? Preparing for fallout is not crazy. Joining a cult is crazy.

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