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They made us watch 'The Day After' in high school. There is value in imprinting on kids the true horror and the ever present threat nuclear weapons pose. It's

by calsy 3y ago

They made us watch 'The Day After' in high school. There is value in imprinting on kids the true horror and the ever present threat nuclear weapons pose. It's not a fantasy, it is real and it is the world they will inherit. It only has to happen once, there are no second chances if we get it wrong.

throwanem 3y ago
I was raised the same way, and the drawback is that anything nuclear gets tarred with the same brush. We're paying for that in carbon now, as will our grandchildren's grandchildren.
- naasking 3y ago
  The recent anti-nuclear sentiment was driven more by ecoactivism, not fear of weapons. Germany is a good example of this.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Our current carbon situation has nothing to do with the public's opinion of things, and everything to do with our elected representatives representing monied interests over our own. We understood the dangers scientifically decades ago, and even without that threat, the oil crises should have made clear how important it was to not rely on a desert shipping us black liquid. But we didn't do anything, because that would have hurt the profits of extremely wealthy companies. Remember, oil companies have been colluding and doing anti-social things for personal gain since at least the 1870s, and they had strong tendrils in government basically ever since. Their breakup was an aberration in american policy, and just like Ma Bell decades later, allowing basically free reign to just buy each other up and re-coallesce into another behemoth means trust busting doesn't fix anything, and in fact just gives a business sector the ability to restructure their businesses in a more profitable and extractive way.
- calsy 3y ago
  ??? We don’t fear nuclear power based on the possibility of a world destroying war. It’s feared based on the consequences of a disaster like Chernobyl or Fukashima.
  - throwanem 3y ago
    I'm old enough to remember the arguments against civil nuclear power that were made before Chernobyl, and to have read what were then still recent materials from before Three Mile Island. Proliferation was a big part of the fear initially. But it's fair to note that that more or less disappeared after those two incidents.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
The Day After famously spooked Ronald Reagan -- a former Hollywood actor who liked to catch movies when he could -- who later screened it for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and asked them if it was really that bad. Their answer was "nope, it'll be worse, much worse", and that pushed Reagan to reach out to the Soviets and work on de-escalation.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Jesus, someone should have made him some movies years earlier. Why do we keep electing such losers without imagination or simple understanding of reality?
  - t-3 3y ago
    That's representative democracy; out of $population, pick the richest/"most succesful" of the jobless, and let them make choices for the everyone else.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Not to be pedantic, but you mean "it only has to happen twice'. The first nuclear war was 1945.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  I think the poster meant a global nuclear war - where all 12000 warheads are exploded - nuclear Armageddon.
  - calsy 3y ago
    Correct.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  That was closer to a nuclear massacre than a war. It still shocks me how people seem to think that killing all those civilians has any honour at all - the U.S. should have been disbarred from holding nuclear weapons after that. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to watching Oppenheimer.
  - wombatpm 3y ago
    There is a strong argument to be made that Truman should have been tried for war crimes for dropping the second bomb. You can justify the first bomb as shortening the war, bringing Japan to surrender. The second bomb was about getting an unconditional surrender with terms dictated by the USA.
    - phone8675309 3y ago
      Especially with how little change the unconditional surrender had on Japanese life in the long run. Yes, the emperor came out and told the people he was not divine and has taken on a ceremonial role since then but the emperor was not forced to resign, members of the imperial family were immune from prosecution for war crimes (so the person at the top responsible for the atrocities in Nanking was never held to account for them), several politicians who were class A war criminals rose to the top of the Japanese political leadership after the war, and Japan has never officially apologized for their atrocities.
dotsam 3y ago
For anyone wanting to see it, The Day After is on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/the-day-after-1983-full-original-1751-aspect-ratio https://archive.org/details/the-day-after-1983-full-original...

by calsy 3y ago

throwanem 3y ago

I was raised the same way, and the drawback is that anything nuclear gets tarred with the same brush. We're paying for that in carbon now, as will our grandchildren's grandchildren.

naasking 3y ago
The recent anti-nuclear sentiment was driven more by ecoactivism, not fear of weapons. Germany is a good example of this.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Our current carbon situation has nothing to do with the public's opinion of things, and everything to do with our elected representatives representing monied interests over our own. We understood the dangers scientifically decades ago, and even without that threat, the oil crises should have made clear how important it was to not rely on a desert shipping us black liquid. But we didn't do anything, because that would have hurt the profits of extremely wealthy companies. Remember, oil companies have been colluding and doing anti-social things for personal gain since at least the 1870s, and they had strong tendrils in government basically ever since. Their breakup was an aberration in american policy, and just like Ma Bell decades later, allowing basically free reign to just buy each other up and re-coallesce into another behemoth means trust busting doesn't fix anything, and in fact just gives a business sector the ability to restructure their businesses in a more profitable and extractive way.
calsy 3y ago
??? We don’t fear nuclear power based on the possibility of a world destroying war. It’s feared based on the consequences of a disaster like Chernobyl or Fukashima.
- throwanem 3y ago
  I'm old enough to remember the arguments against civil nuclear power that were made before Chernobyl, and to have read what were then still recent materials from before Three Mile Island. Proliferation was a big part of the fear initially. But it's fair to note that that more or less disappeared after those two incidents.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

The Day After famously spooked Ronald Reagan -- a former Hollywood actor who liked to catch movies when he could -- who later screened it for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and asked them if it was really that bad. Their answer was "nope, it'll be worse, much worse", and that pushed Reagan to reach out to the Soviets and work on de-escalation.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Jesus, someone should have made him some movies years earlier. Why do we keep electing such losers without imagination or simple understanding of reality?
- t-3 3y ago
  That's representative democracy; out of $population, pick the richest/"most succesful" of the jobless, and let them make choices for the everyone else.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Not to be pedantic, but you mean "it only has to happen twice'. The first nuclear war was 1945.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
I think the poster meant a global nuclear war - where all 12000 warheads are exploded - nuclear Armageddon.
- calsy 3y ago
  Correct.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
That was closer to a nuclear massacre than a war. It still shocks me how people seem to think that killing all those civilians has any honour at all - the U.S. should have been disbarred from holding nuclear weapons after that. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to watching Oppenheimer.
- wombatpm 3y ago
  There is a strong argument to be made that Truman should have been tried for war crimes for dropping the second bomb. You can justify the first bomb as shortening the war, bringing Japan to surrender. The second bomb was about getting an unconditional surrender with terms dictated by the USA.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    Especially with how little change the unconditional surrender had on Japanese life in the long run. Yes, the emperor came out and told the people he was not divine and has taken on a ceremonial role since then but the emperor was not forced to resign, members of the imperial family were immune from prosecution for war crimes (so the person at the top responsible for the atrocities in Nanking was never held to account for them), several politicians who were class A war criminals rose to the top of the Japanese political leadership after the war, and Japan has never officially apologized for their atrocities.

dotsam 3y ago

For anyone wanting to see it, The Day After is on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/the-day-after-1983-full-original-1751-aspect-ratio https://archive.org/details/the-day-after-1983-full-original...