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The Cold War

2

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,369 ✭✭✭✭ejmaztec


    But the point I'm making is it isnt comparable. bin Laden couldn, in theory detonate one nuke, but it wouldnt start a nuclear war. One accidental launch during the cold war... seriously, look up Stanislav Petrov on wiki. this man literally saved the world, we would all be dead if not for him. someone a bit more hot headed...

    I didn't say nuclear war, I said nuclear attack.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 28,787 ✭✭✭✭ScumLord


    I didn't take much notice of the cold war, I don't take much notice of any of these imminent treats. There's always some specter waiting to wipe us out if it's not some evil bastards on the other side of the world it's a pissed off God threatening to wipe us all out.

    The stories I've heard from Slovakians and Poles going into west Berlin for the first time are cool though. A girl told me it was like stepping into a different world. Shops everywhere and the colours.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,072 ✭✭✭marcsignal


    Anyone remember the Irish Government 'Protect and Survive' booklet ?
    I vaguely remember it lying around the house as a young child in the early 70's

    http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/

    similar one up on Ebay

    http://cgi.ebay.ie/PROTECT-AND-SURVIVE-How-to-survive-after-a-NUCLEAR-BOMB_W0QQitemZ170169099482QQihZ007QQcategoryZ274QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 637 ✭✭✭Lizzykins


    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!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,062 ✭✭✭cjt156


    ejmaztec wrote: »
    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.

    Utter claptrap - fed to you by scaremongering media. If this was true why would he piddle about with hijacking airplanes?

    How's his underground bunker in a hollowed-out volcano coming on? Has he had the marble floors fitted yet?


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,388 ✭✭✭KingOfFairview


    cjt156 wrote: »
    Utter claptrap - fed to you by scaremongering media. If this was true why would he piddle about with hijacking airplanes?

    Exactly. If the entire (not inconsiderable) might of the North Korean military cannot set up anything but the most basic nuclear warhead delivery system, how could one organisations with probably 1% of their numbers and a miniscule by comparison budget, no place to test said delivery system, at best a couple (if any) nuclear scientists on the payroll....


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 24,369 ✭✭✭✭ejmaztec


    cjt156 wrote: »
    Utter claptrap - fed to you by scaremongering media. If this was true why would he piddle about with hijacking airplanes?

    How's his underground bunker in a hollowed-out volcano coming on? Has he had the marble floors fitted yet?

    We're each entitled to our opinion. Hi-jacking aeroplanes? Well, you've got to start small and work your way up.

    I don't know what happened to his marble flooring, possibly delayed due to the downturn in the construction industry.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 955 ✭✭✭sickpuppy


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,996 ✭✭✭latenia


    In reality, it was never going to happen. If the Russians did decide to attack for whatever reason they would in effect be blowing themselves up. It is for this same reason that Iran's nuclear programme doesn't bother me. It was sick and perverse (and still is) but it kept the world relatively peaceful.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,367 ✭✭✭Agamemnon


    Lizzykins wrote: »
    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!
    LOL, maybe all the potholes in our roads are actually emergency fallout shelters so.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,388 ✭✭✭KingOfFairview


    latenia wrote: »
    In reality, it was never going to happen. If the Russians did decide to attack for whatever reason they would in effect be blowing themselves up. It is for this same reason that Iran's nuclear programme doesn't bother me. It was sick and perverse (and still is) but it kept the world relatively peaceful.

    Accident. Again, look up Stanislav Petrov.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,921 ✭✭✭✭Pigman II


    I was only a little kid but I remember there being a general distrust of the Russians. They had nothing to live for and didn't value life as much as "we" in the West did so therefore they wouldn't think twice about pushing the button.

    Then I heard a song on the radio by a traveling vagabond named "Sting". It was about how the russians loved their children too or something. Opened my eyes in a way no one other than George Orwell and that woman in Bangkok have since.

    Thank you Mr. Sting. Good night and good luck!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 459 ✭✭Offalycool


    I wonder how Americas missile defence shield is coming along in east Europe?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,057 ✭✭✭Wacker


    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.


  • Posts: 26,920 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Fail-safe is another movie about the Cold War. It is based around an accidental nuclear attack carried out against Moscow by the Americans and the repercussions that followed.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,097 ✭✭✭IRISH RAIL


    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


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 459 ✭✭Offalycool


    Wacker wrote: »
    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.

    That's kind of like saying, famine and war are good types of population control, because I'm on the winning side. The truth is there are no countries any more, that was just a passing ideology. Phantom warmongering nationalists have been replaced with phantom enemy combatants.

    Sophisticated technology does stabilise the world, but at what price? I would claim it increasingly favours the have's, who don't like sharing amongst themselves let alone the rest of humanity.

    As the supposed leader for the free world would say, "There is only the have's and the have not's." he seems to know clearly who his friends are. Following this stalemate logic to its end.. when the have's have it all.. and resistance finally becomes futile stalemate. If modern man no longer needs his brother or sister to produce his coffee in the morning and tuck him into bed at night, he no longer needs the have not's.

    We are increasingly living in a world where the missiles are turned inwards, and the fear becomes something familiar. Terrorism is an ugly business, and I am not condoning it. But a world of tyrannical stability is a stagnant prison for eternity.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,057 ✭✭✭Wacker


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 459 ✭✭Offalycool


    Fair point. However you are neglecting the reality of today's world. Nukes exist, yet tens of millions of people die due to war every year. The plunder goes on, and the have's have all the cards. No rousing Ideology can turn the tied, there is no promise of a tangible goal. All that faces humanity is constant war, overseen by powerful people with the ultimate deal breaker, the Bomb. This I am not grateful for.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,388 ✭✭✭KingOfFairview


    Fail-safe is another movie about the Cold War. It is based around an accidental nuclear attack carried out against Moscow by the Americans and the repercussions that followed.
    Brilliant movie. and quite readily available on torrent


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,072 ✭✭✭marcsignal




  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,895 Mod ✭✭✭✭Manic Moran


    Life was so much simpler back then: You knew who to keep an eye on, and they were powerful enough you also knew to tread carefully. I caught just the tail end of it, I can recall the fall of the Berlin wall, and I went to the InterGerman border only few weeks afterwards.
    (Russia a korean one thinking it was an american bomber and america an iranian one also thinking it was a bomber).

    KAL-007 was a cold-war event, the Soviets believing it to be a recon flight, but Iran Air 655 was more an incident from an independent conflict: The US Navy was sailing in the Gulf in the middle of the Iran/Iraq war, and after getting attacked both by Iraqi and Iranian forces, was not taking risks: It wasn't cold-war as much as mistaken identity combined with crew error aboard ship, with an aggressive Captain.

    NTM


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,072 ✭✭✭marcsignal






    The scariest thing about these, is that they actually thought it would be any use at all to bother.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,404 ✭✭✭qwertplaywert


    Cold War was over a long time before my birth, but can't really imagine the fear. Tbh , bar a mistake of somebody pressing a button by accident, a full out nuc strike by either side was never likely.They both had everything to lose.

    One thing that really pisses me off is the fact Russia is always painted as the 'bad guy'. The US is hardly perfect itself.For example,atm tt is trying to stop Iran building a supplie of Nucs, yet has about a ten-thousand strong stockpile of there own.
    I would rather a society of Anarchy than the tyranny by Globalisation that is surely going to take over[if it hasn't already] in the next few years. Non religious terrorism ftw!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,072 ✭✭✭marcsignal




  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,468 ✭✭✭ojewriej


    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,072 ✭✭✭marcsignal


    ojewriej wrote: »
    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.

    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,468 ✭✭✭ojewriej


    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.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 24,608 ✭✭✭✭arybvtcw0eolkf


    M.A.D. how it worked out in the end!.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,360 ✭✭✭Wompa1


    I liked Ronald Reagan and still like America. Hoorah!...I say Cold War Smold War!


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