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A comment on Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact. Parent comment

Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by bane on Saturday November 08, 2014 @10:20AM (#8577071)
I grew up right at the tail-end of it, the 1984 Red Dawn was a perfectly reasonable scenario. Whenever I think the hysteria was completely insane I think back to my parents and grandparents and some of the truly bizarre notions that happened during their youth: duck and cover, public bomb shelter drills, etc.

People actually paid significant parts of their yearly salary to build, stock and maintain nuclear bomb shelters in their backyards...in places like Ohio.

Something like this [1] was just seen as mildly eccentric, not something that would get you institutionalized with severe paranoia.

1 - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-1970s-undergro...

People, large numbers of them, actually believed (and it may have been true) that extinction-level global war was an accidental launch away.

What's even more interesting is the long-term vestiges of these ideas have hung around, but without nuclear war being on the horizon they've morphed and latched onto other scenarios: a Republican-Democrat civil war, the Rapture, Zombie invasion, Disease outbreak, etc. These aren't just old shelters, these are brand new.

http://alpinesurvival.com/survival-shelters-for-sale.html

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/archi...

Though, I'm always struck with how everybody wants to outfit their end-of-the-world bunkers with modern living room entertainment centers complete with cable TV, wi-fi and comfortable home-office.

In any other scenario, somebody who spends millions of dollars to build 7,500 sq ft of underground EMP shielded comfortable living area with hidden and barricaded entrance, independent filtered air and water and multiple years of emergency food [2] would be dragged into emergency psychiatric care.

But instead these scenarios are talked about openly on major news networks, reviewed in popular magazines, and I can buy these supplies commercial and off-the-shelf -- there's industries that exist to do nothing but feed this demand!

2 - http://www.costco.com/32,000-Total-Servings-4-Person-1-Year-...

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by stan_rogers on Saturday November 08, 2014 @01:59PM (#8577799)
I remember when the monthly air-raid drills — first Wednesday of the month, 1:00PM — stopped, not because the Cold War had gotten any colder, but because the missile threat made the "I've got plenty of time to get to the shelter" bomber scenario almost laughable. I also remember the panic I felt, several years later, when the damned local siren went off (on the wrong day and at the wrong time of the day) because someone was digging where they shouldn't have been digging. I served in the Cold War military, and I'll admit to having an involuntary physiological reaction to hearing Slavic accents to this day. I mean, we knew that the apparent "sanity" of our leadership was really just a delicate spiderweb of constraints based on the desire to remain electable; we sort of hoped that there were similar little wire baskets holding the champagne-corks in place on the other side as well, even if they worked differently. And yes, we always suspected that somebody on the other side would go rogue, and had no reason to believe that the people on the other side didn't see us the same way. We feared an accidental launch, but we also feared that some idiot, somewhere, would decide that they could actually get away with a first strike. To me, this stuff is all "just the other day"; I really can't tell you how happy I am to hear that there's a whole generation or two of people who can't really understand a goddamned word I'm saying when I talk about the old days.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by bdunbar on Sunday November 09, 2014 @01:40PM (#8580482)
> We feared an accidental launch,

For a while I stood sentry at a post that, I always felt, was a candidate for attack. At least, we had a bomb shelter and drilled on relocating, and living in that thing.

At 03:00 on cold mornings I wondered if, looking up, I'd see the re-entry glow on a warhead.

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by cstross on Monday November 10, 2014 @08:39AM (#8583394)
I never lived more than ten miles away from a strategic target (in the UK -- which was going to be toast in that "limited tactical exchange") until the end of the cold war, in my mid-twenties.

Memories of that existential state make a really good wellspring for writers of horror fiction.

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by mercer on Saturday November 08, 2014 @11:25AM (#8577302)
> People, large numbers of them, actually believed (and it may have been true) that extinction-level global war was an accidental launch away.

Considering the Cuba Missile Crisis, perhaps that wasn't an entirely unreasonable expectation...

Reminds me of a fascinating (and rather depressing) alternative history of the missile crisis I read a while ago. I couldn't stop reading: http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=...

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by CamperBob2 on Saturday November 08, 2014 @11:35PM (#8579120)
Wow, that guy could step into Tom Clancy's shoes. Why is he doing all that A-level creative writing for free?
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by arethuza on Saturday November 08, 2014 @02:31PM (#8577903)
A novel with a back-story of a similar scenario is Resurrection Day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Day

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by jstatus on Saturday November 08, 2014 @04:23PM (#8578190)
Fun fact -- the shelters in Montana shown on alpinesurvival.com are from a new-age survivalist cult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Universal_and_Triumphant...). I know this because I grew up in it, and actually lived on the street shown in the photo. Everybody sunk their life savings into them and racked up the credit card debt in the late 80s. Yes, connected to the cold war, but for larger "karmic" reasons of course. You should thank them though, it was only through their prayers that nuclear war was averted! Needless to say, most people didn't believe that, and membership collapsed after the Berlin Wall fell. The shelter at CUT's headquarters reportedly was able to have hundreds of people live for decades, and was the largest private shelter in the US. A whole new level of crazy, folks.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by arca_vorago on Saturday November 08, 2014 @04:52PM (#8578259)
Was it really that crazy considering all the "we were about to press the button but didn't" stories that have surfaced about that era since? It was a very real possibility.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by Dylan16807 on Sunday November 09, 2014 @12:31PM (#8580324)
>Was it really that crazy

'it' being what? Preparing for fallout is not crazy. Joining a cult is crazy.

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by sitkack on Sunday November 09, 2014 @02:20AM (#8579338)
Just because it "turned out well" doesn't mean that they were wrong. It also doesn't mean they weren't crazy.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by waterlesscloud on Sunday November 09, 2014 @11:10AM (#8580127)
One of my friends spent his teen years building those shelters. His mom was in the cult. Makes for a great story, in any case!
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by pmoriarty on Saturday November 08, 2014 @04:43PM (#8578237)
"People actually paid significant parts of their yearly salary to build, stock and maintain nuclear bomb shelters in their backyards...in places like Ohio."

See "Doomsday Preppers"[1][2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Preppers

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=doomsday+preppe...

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by bdunbar on Sunday November 09, 2014 @01:37PM (#8580475)
> truly bizarre notions that happened during their youth: duck and cover, public bomb shelter drills, etc.

Duck and cover wasn't bizarre, in context: it's a way to survive a nuclear explosion that isn't in one's lap.

Public shelter drills, also: if one expects one's country to be bombed, then knowing where one's nearest shelter is makes sense.

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by philwelch on Saturday November 08, 2014 @10:40AM (#8577153)
That emergency food supply would feed a family of four for a year, that's not "multiple years" of emergency food if you actually have a family of four. If you have a family of six it won't even last one year.

Emergency food supplies are also useful for things like earthquakes and other natural disasters where you might have to stay put for awhile but you won't be able to make it to the grocery store either. You might need a week of food instead of a year, but if you don't have one and your neighbor does you'd probably be grateful if he shares.

Alternatively, you could just eat it and reduce your food expenses to less than $84 a month.

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by cstross on Saturday November 08, 2014 @01:06PM (#8577631)
Or you might be doing it for religious reasons:

https://www.lds.org/topics/food-storage?lang=eng

(Devout Mormons are supposed to maintain a stockpile of food. I suspect Costco get much of their custom for this preparedness pack from members of the LDS ...)

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by judk on Sunday November 09, 2014 @11:13AM (#8580132)
Religious reasons are just insanity reasons proxies through family and friends.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by philwelch on Sunday November 09, 2014 @05:48PM (#8581183)
Most successful religions have a small dose of insanity and identity carrying a payload of genuinely good moral and practical advice. Stockpiling food is a rational, practical thing to do. The "insanity" in LDS has more to do with things like transdimensional space gods or dodgy, ahistoric ideas about where the American Indians came from.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by bane on Saturday November 08, 2014 @11:35AM (#8577334)
who said people only buy one of these?
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by iolsantr on Saturday November 08, 2014 @12:12PM (#8577466)
Extreme emegency preparededness is insane, but buying a yacht is not? I don't think there is anything wrong with someones hobby being building and stocking their secret fort in the back yard.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by andreasvc on Sunday November 09, 2014 @10:02AM (#8580003)
I think that most people who buy a yacht then proceed to enjoy using it. Preparing for the end of the world is different because it is based on an arguably incorrect judgment call, and the investment will typically not pay off.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by bane on Saturday November 08, 2014 @12:59PM (#8577610)
Actually people who compulsively buy things can have an identifiable mental illness.

Why would people who compulsively believe the world is about to end then spend all their money on emergency shelters, food and guns not?

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by mlonkibjuyhv on Saturday November 08, 2014 @08:46PM (#8578785)
Modern western civilisation is grounded on compulsive consumption. I can agree it's insane, but I don't think we're all mentally ill.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by digi_owl on Tuesday November 11, 2014 @04:20PM (#8592245)
Makes one wonder where the line between mental illness and indoctrination goes...
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by Houshalter on Saturday November 08, 2014 @11:56PM (#8579165)
Ohio is right in the middle-ish of the country and would likely be affected by fallout (as would almost everywhere.) If you don't have a few inches of dirt or concrete between you and the fallout for a few days, your odds are not good.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by iolsantr on Sunday November 09, 2014 @09:33AM (#8579952)
I've no idea who made this map: http://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1376/37/1376372253480.... , but it looks like people who live in or near Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus or Cleveland would have signifcant concerns about direct nuclear strikes. Ohio is historically a major manufacturing center in the US. And Wright Patterson AFB is a major logistal and administration center of the Air Force.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by sah88 on Sunday November 09, 2014 @01:03PM (#8580382)
Does anyone have any reasonable explanation for the concentration of strikes in North Dakota/Montana? I'm not American but I'm under the impression that both states are pretty much a whole lot of nothing, moreso back then. Only thing I can think of is ICBMs going up over the pole and launch sites are concentrated there?
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by bdunbar on Sunday November 09, 2014 @01:43PM (#8580492)
Missiles. Lots and lots of missiles up there.
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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by thisjepisje on Sunday November 09, 2014 @08:08AM (#8579819)
Reminds me of this excellent PKD story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster,_You%27re_Dead!

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Re:Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was Based on Fact by jkn on Saturday November 08, 2014 @11:59AM (#8577430)
Thanks for the links. But really, it would be terribly wrong to institutionalize people just because their choices seem irrational to us.
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