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The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

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Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#31

Post by steven2012 »

ars wrote: post #29
steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

Doesn't this say more about the morals of America vs Russia than anything else? Russians knew Americans would never do that to them, but Americans did not. (It doesn't matter if Russians would or would not, that's how they were viewed.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "morals". If you're implying that Russian knew that the US would never attack, but the Americans couldn't trust that the Russians would never attack, then that would still be propaganda at work.

If some Americans actually believed that the Russians were so maniacal that they would attack, even in spite of Mutual Assured Destruction, then those Americans were foolishly suckered in by propaganda.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#32

Post by jerf »

steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

"It's funny when you look back how suckered in Americans were vs Russians."

Were they, though? There's a difference between "the bad thing didn't happen" and "the bad thing couldn't happen". Perhaps we were too concerned about it back then, but I sometimes fear we're too casual about it today. History strongly suggests the "total extinction" scenarios are overblown ("nuclear winter" is likely not a viable threat, though things could be cooled for a while, we know because other big particulate events didn't result in anywhere near the scary predictions, the dangers of fallout are generally grossly overstated), but they can still end civilization as we know it in mere minutes. They may "only" be able to wipe out all major cities on Earth rather than actually kill every human, but... that's still a bit of a problem.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#33

Post by Helianthus »

steven2012 wrote: post #31
ars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this say more about the morals of America vs Russia than anything else? Russians knew Americans would never do that to them, but Americans did not. (It doesn't matter if Russians would or would not, that's how they were viewed.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "morals". If you're implying that Russian knew that the US would never attack, but the Americans couldn't trust that the Russians would never attack, then that would still be propaganda at work. If some Americans actually believed that the Russians were so maniacal that they would attack, even in spite of Mutual Assured Destruction, then those Americans were foolishly suckered in by prop…

... It's not like we have any clear examples where the world was moments away from nuclear war or anything.

Now you might say that this was a result of American paranoia and that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But thinking that Russian expectations on the matter weren't naive is somewhat naive.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#34

Post by cousin_it »

ars wrote: post #29
steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

Doesn't this say more about the morals of America vs Russia than anything else? Russians knew Americans would never do that to them, but Americans did not. (It doesn't matter if Russians would or would not, that's how they were viewed.)

Yeah, Russians thought better of Americans and also of themselves. (Nuclear war is suicidal for everyone, no matter who attacks first.)

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#35

Post by cafard »

steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

Might I suggest that your sample was a bit narrow? I can remember being pretty troubled at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (yes, I'm that old), seeing that our city was thought to be in range of said missiles by the chart on the front page of the paper.

But from then on, most of the scare stuff seemed to be from the disarmament advocates--think of Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth and the nuclear winter it envisioned. Yes, there were the survivalist nuts, but there weren't that many.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#36

Post by steve19 »

steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

The Russians came close to initiating accidental nuclear war [0] Sure, nobody wanted a nuclear war (MAD [1]) but a mistake or oversight could easily have triggered an accidental war.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#37

Post by dragonwriter »

steve19 wrote: post #36
steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

The Russians came close to initiating accidental nuclear war [0] Sure, nobody wanted a nuclear war (MAD [1]) but a mistake or oversight could easily have triggered an accidental war. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

"Intentional nuclear war based on false indications" would be more accurate than "Accidental nuclear war".

For that incident, at least.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#38

Post by tokenadult »

Several of the comments here relate to the Cold War uncertainty in the West about Warsaw Pact strategic intentions. Stalin's prompting North Korea's invasion of South Korea during the period of occupation following World War II (not to mention what happened to some of the countries of eastern Europe a while beforehand) is an adequate explanation for why the United States wasn't completely sure of Soviet intentions. The war in Korea made no sense, but Stalin started it for his own crazy reasons.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#39

Post by Houshalter »

steven2012 wrote: post #26

I asked a coworker who was from Russia about what their experience was during the Cold War, and whether or not people were afraid of nuclear war. He said that everyone in Russia just laughed it off, and they knew that nothing would ever happen. This is in stark contrast to everyone in the US that I knew. We were bombarded with propaganda about how nuclear war could occur at any second. Movies like "The Day After" (wh…

Was the fear really overblown though? I mean it didn't happen, but several incidents came disturbingly close. And if we were destroyed, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Not being destroyed is the only observable result, so that observation tells you nothing about what the probabilities actually were.

Re: The creation of Missile Command and the haunting of its creator, Dave Theurer

#40

Post by Houshalter »

erickhill wrote: post #3

Great read. But I honestly had to read it while awkwardly covering up parts of my browser window. Some of those large animated GIFs are super distracting.

Am I the only one who liked them? I've never played the game so it's nice to see what it looks like and not just a static screenshot.
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