The Cold War

I do remember seening the threads programme back then and it was quite frighting indeed becasuse it was based sort of on a virtual reality of what would happen should the nukes be launched .I think it brought home to us the whole horror of it all then.Around the same time ther was the frankie goes to hollywood video of ' when two tribes go to war ' which featured to actors resembling Reagen and Yeltsin in a boxing ring punching daylights out of each other , winner takes all.

Living in fear of the bomb since the end of WW2 is nothing new , the cuban missle crisis of 1962 was an even closer shave than the cold war of the 80s ,Kennedys military advisers wanted him to attack the russian missles based in cuba and we could have had a WW3 scenario then ,but he resisted the pressure to do so and he was proved right, but in doing so made himself and enemy of some of the top military brass of the US .

KingOfFairview wrote: »

Peaseant, thats must have been petrifying... I think living in London, Moscow, Washington, etc must have been frightening... irnoically Berlin wouldnt have been attacked in all likelyhood because one side couldnt attack without hitting their own men

Add to all that the odd car bomb, Tube stations being evacuated every time someone left their shopping bags on the platform and Thatcher, London was a great place to be.:(

Yep - we were all brought up to hate the godless ruskies & I remember the parades oin tv too. Actually kind of miss seeing them to be honest. Apparently in Soviet Russia their tv was full of footage of decadent americans alongisde black american inner city riots poverty and chaos. So the propaganda wars were a 2 way street. I also remember afghanistan invasion and the americans cheering for the mujahadeen and arming them to the gills while they slaughtered russian soldiers. Back then you also had wierd things like russian leaders dying mysteriously and their replacements dying a day later (Yuri Andropov anyone ?). Also rememmber being shown videos in school about nuclear fallout too. I was reminded of it living in portsmouth a few years ago near a naval nuclear facility - if you live within 2 miles of one you get a special info pack on what to do in the event of an 'incident'. Back in the 80s a big conversation topic was what you want to be doing when the bomb drops (not if - when). One of the most popular ones was 'drunk and standing in the middle of the street' the logic being no one wants to survive an atomic war to be the equivalent of a leper surrounded by big rats and millions of corpses, blind and dying people etc.
Its hard to describe but the fear at the time was real and ingrained -the thing is theres probably more of a risk of that happening nowadays than there ever was back then. Then the nuclear powers were russia v america & uk, now you also have china, israel, north korea, india and so on.

=

Morlar;54637293]Yep - we were all brought up to hate the godless Apparently in Soviet Russia their tv was full of footage of decadent americans alongisde black american inner city riots poverty and chaos. So the propaganda wars were a 2 way street.

I remember as a kid watching on black and white tv the news reports on rte about the viet nam war and hearing '' american soldiers encountered fierce resistence from viet cong gurrilas today '' and thinking (as only a child would ) why are the americans fighting Gorrillas ?

such innocence

kaimera wrote: »

It was cold

But the summer's were longer and warmer.

ejmaztec wrote: »

Of course it's true. With the direct presidential communication link between Washington and Moscow, there was restraint built in to the system. Neither side wanted nuclear war, because the consequences of such a war were known.

Osama has enough funds to finance the building and delivery of a nuclear weapon. He would have no qualms whatsoever in carrying out an attack. The fact that the US has thousands of nuclear weapons at its disposal is irrelevant. Where would they send them?

This quote from a former us sec def says it all imo.

I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.

They were on a hair trigger for decades - back then if you flew a few miles out of civilian airspace you were liable to be blown out of the sky. Both sides accidentally blew jumbo jets out of the sky fearing bomber attacks (Russia a korean one thinking it was an american bomber and america an iranian one also thinking it was a bomber).

=Morlar;
I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today

Would bush or does bush have the same rational as those people ? then again the political map has changed since those people were in power (castro excluded )