re: #451 Political Atheist

I watched the USSR and the wall fall in my 30’s and welcomed the loss of that superpower nuclear confrontation I had really hoped that was over for good, that the younger of you would live your lives without that kind of existential fear. I’ll never forget the duck and cover drills as a kid in school, looking at bomb shelter signs in malls and big public buildings, hearing the monthly test of air raid sirens. Cold war tropes? Sure but the fearsome reality was undeniable.

Maybe because so many of us older folks lived the cold war the news this morning puts a chill in the air.

If I had my way Putin and Obama and the pro confrontation pols would all have to watch Threads or The Day After before they move any further down the confrontational path. Reagan credited The Day After with giving him great pause and motivation to reduce nuclear arsenals all over.

Also, The War Game.

And maybe the “Sarah’s nightmare” scene from Terminator 2 in slow motion (IIRC, a very realistic dramatization of a nuke going off).

As well as doing the numbers - in Hiroshima, 70k died instantly, 2x that over a coupla months afterwards, many from Acute Radiation Syndrome. And current weapons begin, if I remember correctly, at 31 times the yield of the little boy.