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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

#31

Post by arethuza »

cpursley wrote: post #29

I toured Stalin's secret bunker this summer in Moscow where USSR'S top generals held up during the entire Cuban Missile Crisis. This bunker was the control center for the Soviet's nuclear arsenal at the time. According to the guide, the top leaders debated back and forth whether to preemptively strike the United States. The entire thing was surreal - complete with a freighting nuclear attack simulation (America strik…

"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 damage to Western Europe with medium range missiles.

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

#32

Post by michaelt »

There's a fascinating chapter in 'the strategy of conflict' by Thomas Schelling [1] about accidental nuclear war.

The theory is once both sides had nuclear submarines, any first launch would trigger mutually assured destruction - so no rational actor would ever launch first. And because of that, any threat to launch /intentionally/ sounds like a bluff.

So if you want to threaten your enemy (for example, to make them withdraw some missiles from Cuba) you use a randomized threat - the increased probability of accidental war - which you can demonstrate with lots of near misses.

Just look at a list of nuclear near misses [2] once you know that and you can see the message being sent to the Russians: Missiles in cuba = Defcon 3 = High chance of accidental launch = Not in your interests.

In other words, the capacity for accidental launches is a feature, not a bug.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_... [2] http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issu...

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

#33

Post by paulhauggis »

simonsarris wrote: post #12
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…

Wars would be a lot better if guys would say to themselves sometimes "Jesus, I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." -Kurt Vonnegut

The problem is that in some wars, if you don't, the enemy will strike you just as hard or harder.

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

#34

Post by HillRat »

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?

After WW2, the Turks were the largest standing army in NATO, had performed excellently in the Korean War, were a linchpin between Europe and the Near East, and had a longstanding historical antipathy towards Russia. Basically, the Pentagon trusted the Turks to be more effective war fighters than anyone else in NATO at the time, and to be able to get to any particular front line faster than any other ally. Eventually, the demilitarization of West Germany placed an effective front-line force in place, but in the early Cold War the NATO allies were not really very united.

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

#35

Post by kjjw »

paulhauggis wrote: post #33
simonsarris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars would be a lot better if guys would say to themselves sometimes "Jesus, I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." -Kurt Vonnegut

The problem is that in some wars, if you don't, the enemy will strike you just as hard or harder.

Surely a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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

#36

Post by dalke »

paulhauggis wrote: post #33
simonsarris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars would be a lot better if guys would say to themselves sometimes "Jesus, I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." -Kurt Vonnegut

The problem is that in some wars, if you don't, the enemy will strike you just as hard or harder.

You have just described the philosophy behind the fire bombing of cities, nuclear escalation, and mutually assured destruction - which given Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five was surely what he was talking about when he made that comment.

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

#37

Post by mercer »

bane wrote: post #18
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 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…

> People, large numbers of them, actually believed (and it may have been true) that extinction-level global war was an accidental launch away.

Considering the Cuba Missile Crisis, perhaps that wasn't an entirely unreasonable expectation...

Reminds me of a fascinating (and rather depressing) alternative history of the missile crisis I read a while ago. I couldn't stop reading: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=...

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

#38

Post by stonogo »

ams6110 wrote: post #19
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…

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

Why?

His point is to illustrate the depths of depravity to which cold-war weapons designers were allowed to dive. What is yours?

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

#39

Post by the_af »

paulhauggis wrote: post #33
simonsarris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars would be a lot better if guys would say to themselves sometimes "Jesus, I'm not going to do that to the enemy. That's too much." -Kurt Vonnegut

The problem is that in some wars, if you don't, the enemy will strike you just as hard or harder.

The "guys" in the above sentence include your enemies.
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