The entire thing didn’t make sense to the officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov.  So he let it go.

Then another attack was detected.  A few more missiles this time.  Again, why would the enemy attack with so few missiles, knowing that full-scale retaliation was the only possible response.

He decided not to immediately report the attack as was expected of him.   Had he followed protocol, the blog technology used to post this article may have never developed.

Neither would have Mad Men, True Blood, Lost, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, broadband, the iPod, the Lord of the Rings movies, the Star Wars prequels, laptop computers, Ebay, Amazon, Starbucks, Best Buy, Lady Gaga, Guns and Roses, Madonna, and about six-billion people.

For a real education on the subject, look up “Able Archer” and “Stanislav Petrov”.   Check out this article also.  Not much on Snopes to counter that.   And always remind yourself that in the end what will save us is the quality of the people not just at the top, but at all rungs.

Considering that it’s amazing we’ve made it this far.   Perhaps it says something about humanity and people we’d normally demonize on the “other side” of spectrum.  Hitler not withstanding.

I am thirteen years old, and about five feet two inches tall.  I have got a lot of freckles.  I have hazel eyes, and blond hair which is plenty hard to keep down because I have many licks, and so much of it.  I am not very fat, but fat enough…

I have a pretty good character on the whole, but my temper is not too good.   I am not jelous of any one, I have a very loud voice, and talk alot, but sometimes my talk is not very interesting.

Smiled when I reminded myself whose older brother had written it.

Steve Guttenburg escaping a nuclear blast

For some reason, over the past few months and through various “sources”, I rewatched four feature-length doomsday movies.  These movies aren’t like typical disaster flicks - think ”Armageddon”, “I am Legend”, and “The Day After Tomorrow.”   After watching one of those movies I don’t feel that same sense of dread.  Nothing in them inspires me to fight for the cause of world peace. 

The next few articles will review four movies that affected my ideas on war, nuclear weapons, and human nature.  They’re not strict documentaries.  A couple even do lean towards the disaster genre I described above.  But they all have one thing in common - Nuclear War.  And so…

The Day After

For most younger than thirty, the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. may feel just like any other period in world history: the Great Depression, World War I, the Industrial Age, and so forth.  And like magic it was over in 1990.
Today it’s Terrorism, the Environment, or the “Great Recession” as coined by a few financial blogs.  Not to belittle these fears, but none of these looming distastered threatened to wipe-out civilization in a single day like the threat of global thermonuclear war.   Today, there are plenty of these weapons still armed and ready - though not as ready now as they were.

I’d watched “The Day After” when first broadcast in 1983.

Something happened to compel filmmakers to make such movies in the 1980’s.   I haven’t read a good explanation of why it happened- but it did.   Nuclear War had made it’s way to primetime.   Not as a backdrop like it had for many science-fiction films since the 1950s.   These new movies were dramas.   They were meant to have an effect.

The Day When...

Watched by millions The Day After was broadcast primetime on ABC in 1983, and with limited commercial interruptions.    It was later discussed in school classrooms and even affected Ronald Reagan according to diary entries (possibly to the point where he began to seriously pursue arms reduction with the now former Soviet Union.)

The backdrop was Kansas, smack-dab in the center of “a lot of bulls-eyes” as John Lithgow’s character grimly joked.

It follows several characters literally the day before an attack – where already tense relations between the superpowers quickly spiral out of control in Europe. 

In retrospect I found this part of the movie the most effective.  That situations could deteriorate so quickly into war seem unlikely and yet the movie executed these well enough to feel realistic.

Standouts:

• Jason Robards as usual acted finely - in particular the last scene.
  

  Jason Robards surveys the ruins

• The government wouldn’t permit director Nicholas Meyer (of Star Trek II also!) to film inside Air Force bases unless the movie made it clear the Soviets attacked first.  Meyer refused and had to use footage from an older documentary – the question of who started what is left up to the viewer.
• Those mushroom clouds – surreal.  But to a nine year old kid, frightening.
  The “x-ray” heat effect – strange and probably not accurate but still makes its point.  Some people will die instantly.
• The movie used a lot of stock footage otherwise.  Given CGI was in its infancy that’s about all you could expect when recreating a nuclear blast.  Nevertheless people back in 1983 had never seen that kind of devastation before – and yes, it could’ve happened here!

As the final card stated – the events depicted would actually be much worse if they really had happened.  For censorship and dramatic reasons they toned down the devastation. 

 “Fortunately” for us another movie released about a year later cranked things up.   Coming tomorrow.

But here’s an old one from a few years ago. 

A good one.   Since then Nellie McKay has gotten a whole lot better.

She is, I think, one of those artists you have on your music player, and when one of her songs comes on someone in the room will ask ”who is she?” followed by “I like it.”   I usually take note of the person who asks that question.   A positive note.

• Film and related media
• Science
• Music
• Politics
• Literature

I’ll see how long I can maintain this version of “The Cinema Chimp.”

[Edit: pardon the dust - still figuring out the CSS and layout for this site.]

Later,