Comment on the original thread title: It's bizarre to see politicians saying "We should have been told about the nuke suspected to be in NYC!" The smuggling of a nuke into D.C., the missing suitcase/demolition nukes, all that stuff, was a hot topic of discussion _here_ and in many places. (Of course, many who talked about the missing nukes, even giving their model numbers and depot sites, were sometimes labelled as paranoids. Now the politician sheeple are bleating that they were left in the dark.)
Onward: On Wednesday, March 6, 2002, at 04:50 AM, Ken Brown wrote: > It is a very good film. It won an Oscar for best documentary (which is > odd, seeing as it is fiction). Of course it is very precisely targeted > against Kahn and his views (there is a parody of him in it) and intended > to stress the uselessness of "civil defence" in a large-scale nuclear > war. > > It was in fact finally shown on the BBC at least once - I saw it - but > many years later. > > Useful accounts of it at: > http://www.picpal.com/peterwatkins.html > http://www.mbcnet.org/archives/etv/W/htmlW/wargamethe/wargamethe.htm > > Faustine wrote: > >> Other "must see" bunker TV: >> >> The War Game (1965) >> ... I saw it about 30 years ago. I recognized it for the "lefty Brit" (redundant, I suppose) propaganda it was. Of course, the U.S. lefties had their own scary propaganda, including "Testament" and "The Day After." And then there was the utter implausibility of "On the Beach." Not that a nuclear war is a day in the park, but the film portrayed most of Airstrip One as being utterly devastated. In fact, given the prevailing wind patterns across England and the rest of the U.K., much of the country would be virtually unaffected in a likely counterforce strike. Also, in the 35 years since the film was made, weapons have gotten much more accurate (even on the Russian side) and smaller, on average. Where once the Russians tested a 50 megaton H-bomb (but probably never mounted on a missile), the favored size is 2.5 MT and smaller. Greater accuracy means less megatonnage needed. And there is the whole issue of how many warheads are even targeted these days. Those areas that are downwind of the major blast sites would be primarily hit by fallout...which is where fallout shelters make a big difference. (Someone in this thread recently referred to "blast shelters"...these are expensive to build and were never the thrust of civilian or corporate civil defense.) The horrors in "Wargame" would be real for those in the zone between "nearly instant death" and "death within the first month." No doubt many would suffer. This is to be expected, part of the admittedly high death toll from nuclear weapons. However, many would survive. And many on the "ecotone," the zone between living and dying, will benefit from taking precautions and not just doing the old 60s lefty mantra: "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye." The living will not envy the dead, any more than those who survived World War II envied the dead. Some people even take responsibility for their own safety. Some people even choose to live outside of crowded target areas. Do a search on Schelling points and terrorist/statist targets. Realize why some have moved to coastal regions, downwind from only the ocean. Or why others have stocked up on items useful if smallpox or plague or nuclear war breaks out...or even if martial law is declared. Which of these is likely I won't get into here, but for a relatively small amount of money a person can be pretty well prepared. No guarantee of survival of course, but better than "bend over and kiss your ass goodbye" defeatism. --Tim May
