[LiquidSky]

It's not true at all. The entire Cold War was spent by all sides thinking and preparing for nuclear war.

This sort of attitude is a very post-Cold War one. I also share it too, because the Cold War ended when I was a child so the threat of nuclear weapons always felt like something from the past to me. But if you read about people who were older during that period, you'll see that many people genuinely did live in fear that the bombs could start falling any day. For instance, I remember an Alan Moore interview from right before Watchmen came out where he said he felt there would be a nuclear war within the next few years. It's hard to imagine what living your life in that environment was like.

[jbay808]

This quote stuck with me:

"I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. I can't understand it any more, but I felt very strongly then. I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth... How far from here was 34th street?... All those buildings, all smashed — and so on. And I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless.

"But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead."

Richard P. Feynman

[fit2rule]

There are generations of people alive today who don't remember the Cold War at all, and don't understand the fuss that was made about that era.

These people don't know what it was like to live with the terror that life on Earth could end, any day, within 45 minutes. That was hanging over our heads for decades before the wall fell and the Soviet's 'lost' the Cold War - and before 'terrorists' became the #1 scare factor for modern society.

I often have to remind 20-something year old folks in my circles that the 80's were absolutely terrifying for the potential for nuclear armageddon, not to mention the HIV waves that decimated certain aspects of youth society, as well. There is an ignorance for these things which I think is quite dangerous - kids these days are complacent and un-caring about the rise of the military industrial complex. In the 70's and 80's, we were all concerned not with terrorits, but with totalitarian military leaders, who might end it all ..

[aebtebeten]

I must've been a bit older when the Cold War ended, because I still keep an eye on where permanent security council members* have their sub pens.

On USENET, people used to give their "icbmto:" coordinates in signatures. Ha ha.

As far as "Who's Next" goes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRLON3ddZIw reality imitates art: Alabama (SSBN-731) does indeed have the bomb.

* might we explain much US right-wing two-minute hate against France by the simple existence of Brest?

[elihu]

One of the most emotionally unsettling things I've seen is a fake BBC broadcast that was posted on youtube shortly after Trump was elected. Is was clearly labelled as fictional, but still.

It was about an hour long, and started off with a news report about some kind of stand-off in the Black sea, with footage of jets taking off from aircraft carriers and so on. The reporters say they're not really sure what's going on, and military officials aren't taking their calls. They switch back and forth between footage of non-specific military activity, and the exterior of some building as cars stop and this or that important government or military official gets out with a serious look on their face and enters the building. Then it cuts over to some people on a roof in Poland, talking about flashes of light on the horizon and how the phone lines are down and they can't reach anyone in the neighboring town where the flashes of light came from. Things go downhill from there, and the reporters eventually say they've been told that helicopters are evacuating the U.S. embassy in London and the Queen and her family are also evacuating to some unspecified safe location. The video ends shortly thereafter with the BBC going off the air and being replaced by their equivalent of the emergency broadcast system, announcing a list of cities town and neighborhoods where residents are advised to seek shelter immediately. The list goes on and on until eventually the video cuts out.

I haven't been able to find the video again, I'd guess it was either taken down by youtube or by the original poster. The message I took from it was that in the event of nuclear war, it'll be over before most ordinary people have got any idea of what's even happening, much less why. The fake broadcast was disturbing in part because it didn't have any sort of coherent story or plot.

By now I think most people's anxiety about Trump getting us into a nuclear war has gone down a bit simply because it's been over three years and it hasn't happened yet, and because we have other things to worry about. I don't think it has been quite front-of-mind like it was in the 80's or thereabout, but I also wasn't old enough to remember the cold war much.

[willyt]

Is this the one you mean?https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VWqWAi_H_9o

[elihu]

Yep, I think that's it.