The Cold War

I was born in Sept 1962 and for a short while my mother thought that her firstborn might not make it to the age of one month! Cuban missile crisis and all that fuss!

During the 70s we were terrified of the Russians and the prospect of a nuclear attack. I remember reading the Irish Government's booklet on how to survive a nuclear attack. I think it was called Bas' Beatha-Life or Death. It had cartoons of red coloured fallout covering everything like a blanket! And if you were caught in the open when a nuclear bomb fell you were to turn your eyes away from the flash and crouch down by the kerb for a bit of shelter!

The day after is a 1983 movie about the consequenses of a nuclear war.
It shows increasing tensions in berlin witha a domino effect that all out nuclear war is launched.
It is set in the american midwest where they have loads of misslie silos.
The sight of these missiles being launched in realtity means the people on the ground had 30minutes to find shelter or be vapourised.
It is a quality film and shows the possibility of what could and may happen.

Despite the fear and tension that it created, the world should be very grateful for nuclear weapons. As close as we came to war, it never happened. A cold war without nukes would probably have been a lot hotter.

Of course, we'll never know. Interesting none-the-less.

When you really think of it the cold war was great for anyone involved.
they all had jobs in the army or making guns and it gave them something to believe in.
Come on putin we can do it:D

Offalycool wrote: »

That's kind of like saying, famine and war are good types of population control, because I'm on the winning side.

Eh... no it isn't. It's like saying that the total global annihilation of 1989 was a good form of population control, because it never happened.

A war between the West, led by the US, and the East, led by Russia, would have claimed tens of millions of lives by a conservative estimate. If there were no nukes involved, this war would have been a lot more likely, as both sides could at least hope for victory, rather than mutually assured annihilation.

I was on the other side of the wall, so my memories are bit different. Although I was born in 1980 so missed most of the Cold War itself, but was there for the fall of the Soviet Block.

Still remember queing at the shop at 4 o'clock in the morning to get milk. Oranges, bananas, any type of exotic fruit really and proper ham for christmas only. My parents had to queue for 4 days to get some furniture - I kid you not, there was always a committe in these queues checking if everyone is in there. They were actually people making good money queing for others.

Me and all my friends collecting empty beer cans and cigarette packs, they were so colorfull and exotic compared to ours. Actually we didn't have any drinks in cans or cartons, just bottles.

Only few kinds of sweets, 3 types of ice cream, no crisps - only the sh1tty corn ones. No coke, only pepsi. I actually remember my first packet of crisps and first bottle of coke, i was eleven at the time.

My dad was a policeman then, and we lived in town full of miners who blindly supported Solidarity, so for a while we had an AK47 at home and my da was always armed. That earned me a lot of cool credit with my friends.

Streets were very safe, no such thing as Anti Social Behaviour, government dealt with anything like that very swiftly.

A lot of Anti Western propaganda in children programes and school.

ANd that was the 80s, it was much worse before that. But we didn't really mind at the time, we didn't know any better.

marcsignal wrote: »

wow ojeweriej ! it's mad to get perspective from the other side !

I remember telling some Czech and Polish friends in Dublin that we never learned about countries in the Eastern Block in school, that part of the map was all just coloured in Red.

There was a lot of censorship on our side, so we didn't know much about the West either. It wasn't easy to get a passport, so not many peoplke went to see for themselves. If you weren't somwhere high up in the Party, you couldn't go on holidays abroad with the family - they always kept someone in the country, so you wouldn't be tempted to stay there.

I remember always on sunday there was this program called "Closer to the world" - at the end they would show clips from western tv for few minutes, Benny Hill was our favourite, we thought it was great.

It was really funny as well when the wall fell and the market was finally freed. Everyone was starting their own business, and usually failing very quickly. A lot of people wanted to be cool and named their businesses in english, not knowing what the words mean. For years we had the range of soft drinks called "Dick Black". They changed the name only few years ago, it's called Bick Black now.