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by elihu
2207 days ago
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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. |
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