Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I just watched "The Day After" and "Threads" a week go. Holy moly, you Cold War guys had to live with some dark stuff. I have had nightmares about that last scene in Threads for the past 3 days. I can't imagine living in a time when that whole "population revert to medieval levels" thing was a possibility.
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While I didn't live during the Cuban Missile crisis which is considered to be the closest we came to a nuclear war, with nuclear war shots loaded and ready to use, we were educated that MAD was a umbrella that kept war at bay.
In a lot of ways when they talked about the reduction of nuclear arms under the treaties that the Russians and American's signed it had the fear that at some point it would make a nuclear war winnable.
You can understand why the Russians had a massive fear of RR's star wars initiative because it did the same thing, there was a very real fear that they could win a first strike if the thing ever worked.
We used to watch the nuclear clock and there were a few times when it was listed at 1 minute to midnight.
In the 50's it was perpetually at one minute to midnight for multiple years.
Right now the clock is set at its lowest point since the late 80's at about 5 minutes to midnight