MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Some sobering reading here
Hah, completely misses that time a Titan Missile actually exploded
Anyone remember the animated film ‘where the wind blows’ ?
A cheery film about an elderly couple in the country trying to survive after a nuclear strike
i put the trailer up last Friday on a work teams meeting, due the storms 🙂
I remember my big yellow nuclear survival book.
I think that’s why we had good music thou the backdrop of death,doom and destruction.
I was born in the 50s, just, and I was one who grew up thinking it was unlikely that I'd live to my 50s thanks to the nuclear threat. I read Nevil Shute's 'On The Beach' when I was really too young, and then 'Down To A Sunless Sea' when I was about 20. Everyone knows that a nuclear war would be pointless, and probably an extinction event, but given the politicians and leaders we have, it's hard to believe that they aren't stupid enough to start one anyway.
I’m not crazy far from where the Americans accidentally nuked Spain,which even more crazily was the plot in the the Cliff Richard Finders Keepers musical/movie 🙂
I keep meaning to cycle down and get a few bike against nuclear warning fence signs pics.
There was some play on the BBC about American bomber crews based in Norfolk (I think) on heroin to cope with the stress, and one of them sets off to drop the bomb. I might have got the details wrong but I remember it scared the crap out of me. This would have been when I was a teenager so the mid 80s I suppose
It’s weird thou the interest in making films and tv programs about nuclear apocalypse , almost like they were deliberately scaring the shite out of everybody on a weekly basis in the 80’s 🙂
If you believe in crystal ball foresight the current world system will be destroyed by a weapon from space that will split/break earth into pieces. The destruction is caused by a human madman who will be stationed in space and dissolute with earth. When? Sometime in future when we can live in space station "permanently", of course.
No wonder we all went hedonistic with raves.
It's weird right but that's exactly around the time I had recurring dreams about nuclear apocalypse 🤪
If you believe in crystal ball foresight the current world system will be destroyed by a weapon from space that will split/break earth into pieces. The destruction is caused by a human madman who will be stationed in space and dissolute with earth.
Charlton Heston, is that you?
It’s weird thou the interest in making films and tv programs about nuclear apocalypse , almost like they were deliberately scaring the shite out of everybody on a weekly basis in the 80’s
Hollywood and the BBC funded by KGB? Makes you think...
TBH I never really thought but having a gentleman’s agreement and banging up the rhetoric on both sides gives each side the ‘other’ that they can use for their citizens to blame as opposed to the regime.
chewkw
Free Member
If you believe in crystal ball foresight...
Thankfully I don't 😂
So those of us who grew up in the 70's / 80's were scared shitless by the impending war, will those growing up now feel the same about Climate change ?
I reckon avoiding a nuclear war is / has been possible, whereas sadly we wont avoid - haven't avoided Climate disaster.
Perhaps Putin's taking of Ukraine may actually help stop us depending on Gas and accelerate other forms of greener heating.
I read about how the Americans wernt happy with the Russian missile detection systems and would dileberatly leak info to them to actually improve the Soviet early warning systems so to avoid false alarms and accidentally retaliation. Assured mutual destruction is key to both sides.
I read On the Beach a couple of years ago and it has stayed with me I have to say.
Interesting to have folks talk about 'nuclear nightmares' - growing up in the 80s in Gourock, we had the Holy Loch US nuclear subs, and also Faslane/Coulport, just across the water. We also talked a lot as kids about what we would do if it all kicked off, pretty sure we came the conclusion that it would be best to run to the top of the nearest hill with a clear view of the holy loch (if anyone knows Gourock - Tower Hill was voted best spot with easy access and a good clear view) and let the blast incinerate us. What kind of conversation is that for a kid to have? Sheesh!
I absolutely went through a period of nightmares - woke up screaming at night for weeks thinking we were under nuclear attack. One night I vividly remember my curtains were not shut properly, and I became fixated that my parents had done this so I could see the blast more clearly. A pin sharp, horrible, memory. That night my grandpa was there, and he was the first one to get me to talk about what it was that was upsetting me. Was fine after that, thanks Gramps!
I read about how the Americans wernt happy with the Russian missile detection systems and would dileberatly leak info to them to actually improve the Soviet early warning systems so to avoid false alarms and accidentally retaliation.
There's this terrifying story of how close we came....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident
Glad R Briggs has been mentioned, and Roger Waters’ songs for WTWB are worth a relisten. But no one has mentioned Frankie Goes To Hollywood yet… Two Tribes, the song and the video, was an iconic pop moment totally Cold War inspired…
I worked with someone who had been an RAF officer during the early cold war - in the bomber rather than missile era.
He wasn't a pilot, so he was merely relaying a story he heard after the fact, so take it with a pinch of salt.
All the crews had collaborated - bombers, refuellers, and fighters.
If they were ever given The Order, they were all going to desert.
Every time they went out, they had the relevant charts and radio codes, and had sufficient fuel in the tankers, to run to south america (ditching the bomb in the middle of the Atlantic) and were going to trade the fighters for citizenship and hopefully live on the one continent that they thought was going to survive nuclear war.
I figure Cormack Mcarthy's The Road could be based on a nuclear apocalypse, which terrifies me.
Where is the global outcry against nuclear weaponry?
Same as climate change. No one agrees with it, but what can be done. <cough> Corbyn </cough>
I'm sure I read an article in the past year about all countries agreeing that Nuclear war would be pointless and should never happen. Suitably flimsy and non-commital, something like this:
But I'm sure it involved the nuclear powers.
I don't remember any of these broadcasts at all. Only nuclear thing I mind is chernobyl, can remember there was a bit of a hooha in the playground about it at the time, but I was only in p4 in 1986, so barely even understood what that meant.
So, guess i missed these broadcasts about nuclear war, wasn't really something that I ever worried about.
Protect and Survive was a public information campaign on civil defence. Produced by the British government between 1974 and 1980,
Quick google, guess 2/3 year old me wasn't up on the geopolitical realities of the time. 😆
This thread reminds me of this song by Discharge and the feeling during those times.
Disturbing stuff.
Nuclear war would be pointless and should never happen
The SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan) the US' plan for nuclear war is a fascinating bunch of documents and has a bizarre history all of itself, from the early days of Curtis LeMay fighting with Eisenhower for control of the budget and to wrestle civilian oversight of the production of delivery of weapons through to plans to ensure that the "wrong sort" of President couldn't stop it, or indeed was even aware that a first strike had been launched. Often the assumptions behind where weapons where dropped was just nonsensical or redundant. Because of the Never/Always operational plan that the US evolved (must Never go off accidentally/must Always work when required) there was triple or quadruple redundancy on some targets that would've meant 1000's of megatons being dropped onto targets that were essentially already piles of smoking rubble. 23 weapons aimed a 4 targets in Leningrad for instance, or the utter destruction of Albania because it had several important Russian Radar sites.
Let's not forget this masterpiece...
As another kid in 70s and teenager in the 80s, remember Threads well. Threads was made in retort to the very 'upbeat' film the Americans made called 'The Day After'.
Threads was born as a UK response to the US film. And what a Docudrama Threads was!
My father was in the Royal Navy on the Polaris nuclear submarines in the 70s and 80s.
We used to talk about survival candidly. We had a holiday caravan near Faslane, and our house was near an RAF base, so we knew wherever we were we would be toast (pardon the pun).
All the cold war rhetoric, the films such as WarGames, and playing Commodore 64 games where we got to nuke the rooskies were all part and parcel of growing up then in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.
Sorry, just off to YouTube to listen to Hammer To Fall!
run to south america ... ... and hopefully live on the one continent that they thought was going to survive nuclear war
Like the UK family in 1981 who decided to something similar. Emigrate to a British group of islands off the coast of S America. Ideal place to avoid the fallout from nuclear war, but turned out not so well for conventional war.
I live just a few miles away from Greenham Common and clearly remember the decision to keep missiles there and then all peace campers that arrived and the demonstrations that went on etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Greenham_Common
will those growing up now feel the same about Climate change
Oddly, I have been very conscious of this since my teens, in the 90s, and I actually don't know why it started. I think before I die I will see a real struggle for resources leading to a possible world war.
Nuclear War music thread?
Can't get better than this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doomsday-Machine-Confessions-Nuclear-Planner/dp/1608196704
Is a great but scary read.
Was on a gung ho US website this morning with quite a few folk seemingly keen to "put warheads on foreheads". Their phrase, not mine.
I live very close to Switzerland, I wonder if there would be any of it left... though having stayed in a civilschutzanlager of considerable scale for a few days, they are very well prepared.
I've never seen so many Miele appliances in one place....
Is there a serious threat of nuclear war because of this, or at the very least the UK being attacked directly? The more I read about this, the more I get confused at what the outcome might be.
I don't think the Ukraine situation will lead directly to nuclear war, but it's showing that there's an angry and irrational dictator in charge of Russia, which is worrying.
@ thestabiliser
Charlton Heston, is that you?
No, I am Ming the Merciless.
LOL!
Is there a serious threat of nuclear war because of this, or at the very least the UK being attacked directly?
Not really. There is a chance of the RF steadily pushing further into Europe though, and you can't rule out Russia using small nuclear arms as part of the overt military side of that. Any attacks on the UK directly are more likely to be in a similar fashion to the ones that already happen.
I've never seen Where the Wind Blows but I can recommend Grave of the Fireflies (if for some reason you're not depressed enough by modern life already, and want to watch an utterly harrowing cartoon to make it worse).
Do not watch Grave of the Fireflies if you are already struggling in any way.
Is there a serious threat of nuclear war because of this, or at the very least the UK being attacked directly?
Definitely. Putin has had enough of hiding himself away and wants to go down as the guy who solved climate change by rendering it redundant. 😄
Seriously though, stop worrying. If anyone tells you there's a risk of nuclear war then they're idiots. No one is going to destroy human civilisation because of an Eastern European backwater which is mostly empty. Not even Putin.
As far as I can see at this point in time the main people benefitting from all this is the media, Putin, and a few failing Western politicians who get to boost their ratings by pretending to be tough.
an Eastern European backwater
Charming.
But you are right, there is no chance of Ukraine's Neighbours intervening militarily. Well, apart from one important belligerent dangerous one that is. The same goes for allies. There is only one country on a war footing here. The only military push back they will face is Ukrainians trying to defend their ever decreasing territory.
And there is no chance of a nuclear escalation that results in attacks on the UK. Any nuclear threat will be localised and non-tactical.
The only military push back they will face is Ukrainians trying to defend their ever decreasing territory.
I don’t even think that will happen. I doubt Ukrainians prize their illusory ‘independence’ enough to fight to the death. Joining the eu is really not worth potential obliteration.
The Shamen war prayer
I saw the Shamen at Brixton Fridge the night the first Gulf war broke out.
Makes you think.
Thank you for admitting responsibility. Respect.
an Eastern European backwater
You mean a far away country of which we know nothing?
Seriously though, stop worrying. If anyone tells you there’s a risk of nuclear war then they’re idiots. No one is going to destroy human civilisation because of an Eastern European backwater which is mostly empty. Not even Putin.
There is always the risk of nuclear war, too many regime's that have them are at best described as unstable or dictatorships
There is always the risk of nuclear war, too many regime’s that have them are at best described as unstable or dictatorships
Would it actually come to all out N War though?
Let's say one side used a single nuke - for the sake of argument, suppose Russia fired a nuclear-tipped cruise missile into Ukraine*. Relatively low yield. Sure, there'll be a lot of casualties, damage and so on but would the other signatories of the Budapest Memorandum (UK and USA) respond likewise against Russia?!
If Russia claimed it was all a big mistake and there was an immediate cessation of hostilities, would UK and USA be justified in obliterating Moscow? Would Ukraine demand that kind of response on it's behalf?
Would Russia then feel obliged to defend itself and return fire?
At what point does it become easier for Ukraine to just surrender and accept its new role as part of Russia than for all sides to start exchanging nukes? Russia would come in for massive sanctions, be frozen out of as much as reasonably possible (while still acknowledging that we need our oil and gas from them!) but there would seem to be little point in actually responding...
*other countries/scenarios available.
Nuclear War music thread?
I started wondering about that... "stats" from discogs searching for 'nuclear' by decade:
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Pretty pointless tbh.
I don’t even think that will happen. I doubt Ukrainians prize their illusory ‘independence’ enough to fight to the death. Joining the eu is really not worth potential obliteration.
What makes you think Ukrainians would start it? Or are you talking about general resistance?