Category: Nuclear Warfare

~by Sean Paul Kelley

In 1983 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock clocked in at 3 minutes to midnight. America was in the middle of one of the most dangerous five year periods of the Cold War. Detente was dead. Able Archer exercises occurred that November. KAL-Flight 007 was shot down by the Soviets on September 1, 1983. And a newly assertive America under Reagan got busy stationing 103 Pershing II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles in West Germany to counter hitherto deployed Soviet SS-20 Saber IRBMs. Dialogue between the two superpowers came to an icy halt.

In the middle of this complex realpolitik the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the US gained steam, throwing their support behind Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro’s nod to run against the Gipper in 1984 and the American millitary buildup continued at a frenetic pace.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, so to speak, something earth-shattering (at least to me) was fixing to be broadcast on November 20, 1983 on ABC: The Day After. An American media attempt to depict the aftermath of a full-on thermonuclear exchange between the USSR and the USA.

Jason Robards-who I always confused with George Peppard of A-Team fame—was the central character. A small town doctor out of his depth treating increasingly desperate radiation-sick patients from all over. I recall one scene, a kind of town meeting, where one woman, wearing a white dress, bled from between her legs, obviously from a critical lack of feminine hygeine producuts. And I recall someone needed to travel to the Bay Area, which once he arrived saw that it was totally obliterated.

I was horrified. My Mom was genuinely worried about me. That film represented my political baptism by fire. Henceforward, I watched the nightly national news like a child obsessed. I followed the course of the Cold War with interest and obvious worry that one Sunday morning—I don’t know why it was always a Sunday—I’d be vaporized along with my little sister and Mom. As I grew older I matured. I viewed the nightly national news with a bit more sophistication. I began reading the national news rags. Remember Time and Newsweek? I devoured them. I recall vividly Cori Aquino’s Revolution in the Philippines and Ortega’s ouster by Violetta Chamorro in Nicararagua. But I never, ever forgot the lessons of The Day After:

Risk peaks when one feels absolutely certain and safe. This is when calamity strikes.

Risk feels at its greatest after calamity passes and one feels chastened.

~attributed to Jesse Livermore

Anyone have a clue where the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock rests today?

89 seconds to midnight. Arms control be damned. ‘Murican don’t give a shit.

The entire arms control regime brought into life by Reagan and Gorbachev, extended by Bush and Baker, followed by the sage, bipartisan Nunn-Lugar Act and Clinton’s negotiating of the START Treaty have all been cast aside. First, by George W. Bush’s hamfisted and stupid abrogation of the arms control regime’s lynchpin: the 1972 ABM Treaty. Followed by Trump letting the INF lapse. And finally, this February, once again, irresponsibly letting the START Treaty lapse.

With the War in Iran not going well, China has taken to using proxies to warn Israel of the cost of using nuclear weapons against Iran:

“the moment Israel uses a nuclear warhead against any country, it will be considered the number one enemy of humanity, it will be the demise of Israel as a state, as a regime, as a country.”

Explicit but utilizing an indirect conduit, as one would expect of the Chinese.

Not to be deterred, American policy-makers lauched their own trial balloon in favor of an Israeli first-strike.

Yes, people, we’re that close.

But here’s the absolute shit-kicker, as we say down here in South Texas: the depiction of the aftermath of global thermonuclear war in The Day After is weak compared to the UK film on the same subject, dated 1984, called Threads.

American movies require a happy ending. Always. And The Day After offers up a milquetoast version of positive.

Not so Threads. And for that fact alone, Threads, horrifying in the extreme—mind you, I watched it as an adult—is the more realistic film, and its depiction of the civilization ending effects of thermonuclear warfare will leave you chilled to the bone. Threads is a much more effective admonitory tale of the very real risks we’re shopping off as I type.