re: #549 PT Barnum

Movie reference to a 80’s film called _WarGames_. Long story short is that a military supercomputer gets the keys to the ICBM launch codes while playing a game called “Global Thermonuclear War” with a hacker (Matthew Broderick).

SPOILER below!

Right when it looks like the computer is going to *really* launch the missiles and trigger World War 3 they get it to run it’s self-learning program. It then starts running all the different simulated nuclear strategies and simming them out. Being MAD, they basically escalate into the US and USSR nuking themselves and most of the rest of the world to bits. At the last moment everything stops and the computer comments, (via text I think, possibly via voice synthesizer.)

“An interesting game. Apparently the only way to win is not to play.”

:)

I have to explain all that to the Magic players as well, though they generally are amused.